Kasparov On Facing Deep Blue: 'I Was Part Of Something Really Unique'

The recently released TV series Rematch, a dramatized version of the legendary matches between GM Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue, was an excellent reason for an interview with the 13th world champion. Although he hadn't see the series just yet, Kasparov was, as always, good for a highly interesting talk, which took place online.

PD: Hi Garry, good morning. Thanks for doing this. How are you?

GK: Good morning. I'm fine, I'm just curious about your questions. By the way, yesterday in the bookstore I saw your book, The Chess Revolution. I went to the bookstore, Barnes and Noble, I very often visit it with my daughter. We looked at the history section, I looked at the Russian history and then she said, papa, look, there's this book and even your name is mentioned!

Well, I can tell you I will also be at the conference in St. Louis and the 9LX after so I will have a copy for you. So yeah, my idea was to ask a few questions about the series that just came out, Rematch, then maybe just some more general questions, revisiting the actual matches a little bit and then at the end maybe one or two questions about your upcoming events, the conference and 9LX. Is that alright?

I'm afraid I could be of very little help about Rematch because so far I couldn't force myself to watch it – it's a bit painful. Eventually I will, but it's quite an undertaking because... I'm sure it's fine... It's not that I'm still just feeling the pain of what happened in 1997. I do many speeches and I always say that what I believe was a curse in 1997, I believe it was a blessing because I was part of something really unique. And it was an inspiring moment for computer science. Again, being part of that is great. Also, it helped me to understand better that the competition between humans and machines would be over soon and it was time to look for collaboration. But to watch this in detail, you know, and with all the characters, it's, yeah... I will need a bit more time to get in line with it.

So far I couldn't force myself to watch it – it's a bit painful.

Do you think it will be even more difficult for you because they did not make a documentary, they actually made their own dramatized version with their own elements in the story that actually didn't happen. Do you think that this makes it more easy or maybe more difficult to watch?

It will be more entertaining. Actually they had The Machine, the Broadway play. I'm not sure, I think it was a British play, it was here. Again, my wife watched it, but I didn't. Same problem. Yeah, because it was about me and it was very, very close. It had my mother there. Yeah, memories of the past. Sometimes I get a little psychological trouble to deal with it. Yeah, I will watch. Because it's not a documentary, it's more entertaining because people tend to believe in motion movies more than documentaries!

I understand, yeah, and your mother has a fairly big role. So maybe in the end this is how they will remember it instead of how it really happened. But to be honest, I don't think they harmed the truth too much. The real essence of what happened I think actually is still there, but in the details of course they added all kinds of little... For example, I will not give too many spoilers but one of them was that somewhere in the middle of a game the computer actually crashed. I don't think that ever happened, did it?

No, no, it actually happened more than once. That was actually one of the biggest challenges during this match. I take it as a personal fault, I had to be more persistent after the first match because it happened in the first match as well. I remember game four, for instance, and I didn't like it because, you know, I'm sure the audience now is well acquainted with machines, but the moment the machine crashes, technically, the game should be over because it's like a heart attack. What comes next is a new game from a machine perspective. So it's, guys, no, you can't control the machine, fine. Because when they restart, whatever they do, you cannot control. So it's a different ball game. And it happened more than once.

The moment the machine crashes, technically, the game should be over because it's like a heart attack.

Do you also remember thinking like, okay, now they were in the middle of a game, they're messing with the computer, they're restarting it, they might be doing something else to it, maybe they're even adjusting the algorithms while we're in this game. Were those the thoughts you had?

We don't know, but it's psychologically very unpleasant. I already buried the hatchet, I had many events with IBM, we smoked the pipe of peace, at several occasions. But if we go back to 1997, the rules were bent not in the human favor. Because IBM was a player, the organizer, I mean, they controlled everything. You don't have to take my word, you just read what [GM] Miguel Illescas wrote in his book, how they even replaced the guard, you know, next to my green room by having somebody who spoke Russian to basically understand what remarks were made by me and GM Yury Dokhoian.

Then also, they had a terminal in the playing hall, one was there, another one was just across the street and the third one was in Yorktown Heights. There were definitely two, probably three terminals. And while Ken Thompson was watching, as he did in 1996, so technically there was the watchful eye, but even an expert of that caliber cannot do anything if a machine crashes and then comes back. I think it happened a couple of times in the match.

Was it running on Windows? I guess it couldn't have run on Windows.

No, the architecture of Deep Blue, it was quite a masterpiece of parallel processors because that was the reason IBM paid for the project, they wanted to have the maximum output from parallel processors. I think they had 256 chess-playing chips. Each chip could calculate 1.5 million positions per second and the idea was just to maximize the effect. I think at the peak they reached something like 200 million, which was phenomenal returns, it's over 40 percent. And they were very pleased with this result. But as a matter of fact, it also played a little bit of chess, as we know.

The series actually starts with the character playing you in, like, 25 years later, in 2022 and then right after it goes back into history. He's basically giving a speech like you do a lot these days, and he says, it's a bit of a cliche maybe, but he says 'chess is war, chess is mental torture, and the goal is to destroy the mind and soul of the opponent.' And I just wanted to have your comment on it. Was this how you played chess? Was this how you saw it? Was this your approach?

Yeah, you may say so, but it was... What I can tell you is that in 2022, I never introduced this concept into my lectures. Everything I did and am still doing, all my events that involve AI and, of course, the story of Deep Blue – just recently, I did two events in Sao Paulo, when I talked about humans and machines and collaboration – it's based on my experience. But this is the problem with these kind of movies that use elements, the truthful elements, but they merge them the way they want, you know, just for suspense. I never wanted just to do these two things to collide. So yes, when I played professional chess, yeah, I believe it and I think I said it maybe in the eighties, early nineties, at a much younger age: that it's a most brutal game because it's about psychological domination. And it's really painful because if you made mistakes, you lost. So you feel it that you're being just outplayed. On the psychological level it's even more brutal than the physical loss. But again, it's not 2022. But it's not a departure from the truth. It's just a little play, a little trick that they always play by mixing various times and bringing real quotes, but creating slightly distorted pictures.

I think I said it maybe in the eighties, early nineties, at a much younger age: that it's a most brutal game because it's about psychological domination.

After you won the first match in Philadelphia in 1996 they briefly suggest that when you got the first offer for the rematch that you actually did not want to do it, you refused. And then there had to be some kind of rethinking and your mother got involved in all that. But do you remember being sort of not too interested or were you like: no, right away I want to go, I want to do another one next year. How did this go between match one and two?

That's simply not true. That's not what's happened. It's about the way I always approach this human vs. machine competition, because for me, it was a great scientific experiment of the end of the 20th century. But I wanted to continue, there's the contradiction. You know, it goes all the way back, you know, to the late 1980s when I played Deep Thought, the prototype of Deep Blue, in New York. So again, many people said, how could you accept it? Because it's risky for the world champion in 1989. So we played two games in New York. I won both games quite handily. What happened after these two games? I went to talk to these guys, I mean, you can ask Murray Campbell [who was part of the IBM team at the time - PD] for instance. I always advised them.

For me, it was a great scientific experiment of the end of the 20th century.

That's what I did after 1996 by the way, I went to Yorktown Heights, they invited me. I did a lecture about the match, gave my impressions, and then we sat and we talked about the match with a team. And they had all IBM labs, I think it was three or four labs around the world, they joined, it was like a big presentation for IBM. And then I met the IBM management, the top management. And so at the time, we had lost our contract with Intel, and I wanted to recover the rapid chess Grand Prix, so I suggested that we'd be delighted to work together so I'd be delighted to play the rematch, and I would like them to replace Intel. And they said yes, by the way. But what happened was that because it was two different departments... Basically, again, this is my fault. So it was not done properly, there was no kind of glue to put these two together and eventually they dropped the sponsorship. And I ended up only with this match. But there was not a single moment where I was hesitant because for me it was very important to move forward.

And, of course, I could have been more watchful when I looked at the contract. Because one of the things that I insisted was that I would have access to the games of Deep Blue, not to have the same guessing contest as in Philadelphia. And they said, absolutely. But again, you always read the fine print on the bottom of the page. While they said yes, you can get access to Deep Blue's games, it was only the games played in official competitions. And of course, they never played a single game outside of the lab. So basically, when I just realized that they've changed the contractual obligations, and I ended up with a contract that actually was almost the same as in Philadelphia. Though, of course, they were much better prepared, and again, they had more time to improve the machine. And still, this was a way they could go through the match almost uncontrolled. Professionally, that was very stupid of me.

I wanted to ask you about your relationship you might have had in that period with Feng-hsiung Hsu, the main developer of Deep Blue, because in the series there are some moments where you meet each other, you talk behind the scenes, and they do suggest that in the end you had the common goal of going for the scientific experiment. And in the series he is portrayed as, in the end, the scientist who wanted to have the fair contest and was almost maybe like a victim of IBM's greed, you could say. He was turning his back against some of their decisions. To what extent did you have a relationship with him?

I talked to him, I talked to the team. So again, after the first match, I was happy to share my impressions because for me it was an experiment, a very important experiment. I just wanted to learn more about it because I thought it could give us some just very important information about the differences in decision making between humans and machines. And I was open just to talk about it. Obviously, it was not very professional because I had to compete and they used, I'm sure, some of my advice. But as for the conflict within IBM, I don't know. If they wanted to continue the experiment, and I think they can have had some moral obligations, they could have done it. Because it was 1-1, I won the first match, I lost the second match, and it could be a rubber match. 

We needed a third set.

Yeah, a third set, and I put my offer on the table and they turned it down because they realized that from a business perspective they couldn't gain anything. I think I was, again, it's clear, I was a better player at the time, so I would have probably won the rematch. But from their perspective, even a draw would be a disaster because they already, they gained it. They won the holy grail of computer science, beating the world champion. They just retired Deep Blue and it was over.

Again, I think more could be learned because at that time we were still in the process where humans could compete. You know, I played two matches with Deep Junior and Deep Fritz and in 2003, they were not inferior to Deep Blue. So both matches ended in a tie. And Kramnik played matches, I think one was a draw and one he lost. Only by 2005, 2006, the competition was over. But in 1999, 2000, there could be a lot of interesting things to discover. Again, somehow, what you described, it was true though I cannot recall exact details, but I was very open from the very beginning to talk to IBM about my feelings, and how we could continue just making this experiment that could benefit humans, the game of chess, and also computer science.

The main conclusion, well, the point that is being made in the series perhaps, and it's probably something you agree on, is that in the end the battle was lost on the psychological battleground. I also sort of write it in my book that even though you were the better player actually and maybe you would still have been the better player one or two years afterward as well, all the things that happened got too much in your mind and you were simply not able to play your best level in 1997. Do agree with that?

There's no doubt about it. Just look at the quality of the games. You can put on the engine and it will start showing you that many mistakes were made on both sides. But again, one of the mistakes made just before the match was agreeing with the schedule. So we played two games in a row, a rest day, two games in a row, two rest days and two games in a row. You know, I needed an extra day between the games. So if after game five I had had a rest day, I think game six would be different because it's difficult to recover. It's huge pressure. And also, after game two, my mind was haunted by what happened there, by these very mysterious moments. 

So if after game five I had had a rest day, I think game six would be different because it's difficult to recover. It's huge pressure. 

Yeah, they take a lot of time, maybe even 10 minutes or something in episode two or three, there's a lot of minutes focused on this very dramatic moment, the way they film it when this, let's say, positional move, 37.Be4 is played. That was a key move, right? 

It is a key move, and IBM failed to actually explain how it happened because, again, it's not totally out of touch with the machine's depths but the fact is that it was just, I think it took 14 minutes and what they showed was some interesting drop in evaluation. I remember the explanation, because the machine could have won three pawns, two or three pawns basically, but then Black would have serious counterplay. And I remember that I was asking these questions and the response came, 'yeah, but it was too dangerous.' I said, too dangerous is a human evaluation! If you have plus three pawns, plus 300, can you show me? Because, I think if I remember correctly, 37.Be4 gave, by the machine's evaluation, plus 51. I said, can you show me minus 250 against three pawns? Clearly show me minus 250? They never did it.

So that was a problem that, again, I couldn't push it away from my mind because again, I was, we're all humans. And then when I was told that at the end the machine missed that it's a perpetual, that's highly unusual. How can the same machine that basically avoided this, miss the perpetual? So again, I don't know, water under the bridge. I say this, they say that.

Later Hsu wrote in his book that it was simply the result of a bug. 

You know, there's a problem, you have a bug, but somehow all these bugs work in their favor. So that was very challenging. 

But you could say that this bug didn't really work that much in their favor in the sense that maybe they could have won that second game outright, if they hadn't allowed the perpetual.

Yeah, but they would win easily if they're exchanging the queens. It's an easy, it's a technical win. Yes, but again, why this bug? And I instantly resigned. In a human game, I would have played 45...Qe3, but against the machine I thought, of course it can't miss it. And then I was told, wait, wait, wait, it did miss something.

And then, by the way, I had a firm initiative. In the next three games, I was pushing. But winning the game is quite challenging. Game four was probably the best game of the match, the cleanest game. It's a very good pawn sacrifice and the machine defended well. So I think by the professional standards, that was probably the best game of the match. And then game five, once the machine played 11..h5, I got really confused. I mean, the opening, it doesn't play 11...h5!?

And now I know I missed a win. I missed a win, the machine missed a draw, I missed a win... Stockfish or just any other engine will show you that everything that was trumpeted by the commentators ('phenomenal, great, Garry made the move!') it's all actually nonsense because we played very poorly, both me and Deep Blue. But after game five, I needed time to brush my thoughts, to detox my nerve system. And I wasn't sure. By the way, my preparation was very poor, because I wanted to play some kind of crazy opening, not my style, but just play from the third row, from the back line. More like Petrosian style, not Kasparov style.

Do you regret that?

Yeah, I could have done things differently, you know, by playing other openings, but I already had some ideas what to play. But there was no time to regroup. So obviously I would have avoided sharp Sicilians because this is not what you... but there are many other things I could have done in the Ruy Lopez. Ironically, the only two games I lost were where I played a 'normal' opening.

And what happened in game six... I don't know why I did it. I just believed it would never take on e6.

And what happened in game six... I don't know why I did it. I just believed it would never take on e6.

But then again, then we come back to the same issue, you know, in Illescas's book, when he said that Benjamin told him to analyze this position on the morning of the game. I mean, I never played it in my life. Why on earth would you analyze this position, unless you have some kind of prescience, so just about whatever you could choose?

Well, to be honest, I noticed that both Hsu and Benjamin had stated that this 8.Nxe6 was already in the [opening] book weeks before. I actually emailed Miguel [Illescas] about it and I have this in my book, his reply over email, where he said he agreed with Benjamin, who 'knew better about the Caro–Kann.' So basically he was sort of saying that 'maybe what I said in the interview was not actually true at all.' 

But it's there, you know. 

Yes. But I have a different question about this because I have something from [IM] Malcolm Pein. I'm quoting from my book again because Malcolm told me that he thinks this was never ever published before. He says, let me read it:

They [Kasparov’s team] were convinced that Deep Blue was taking its opening moves from Richard Lang’s ChessGenius program, a popular engine at the time, and asked me to buy a copy. I told them I was a hundred per cent certain it wasn’t using that, but they were convinced. I spent quite a sum of money at the chess shop near Huntington Station and gave them the program. They were misled. They misled themselves.

What's your comment on this quote?

I don't recall an exact name, but Fred Friedel, you know, he actually gave me some advice, not the most helpful, and this was part of it. I remember this is something that we saw and naturally this was one of the positions that happened, so this 7...h6 and the knight goes back to e4. So that's something I saw there. Even today I don't understand why I played it because even if it went on e4, I don't understand why I just wanted to choose this...

You were supposed to have a comfortable opening position after 8.Ne4.

Yeah, it would be even... But probably I had to stick to what worked, you know, like play ...g6, ...d6. And by the way, Illescas said that they had a strict order to offer a draw at move 20. Benjamin never refuted this one. Because they wanted to avoid the game five fiasco in Philadelphia when they refused. I offered a draw in game five, they turned it down and then they lost , it was an equal position. Again, the choice of the opening was very poor but I think psychologically I was already crushed. I needed one extra day and probably I would have been able to think clearly, but after all these emotions, you know, game five, tough game, it ends in a draw, it's late and then you go to the stage and it's people, everybody is shouting 'oh great.' Look, even with my ability to withstand the pressure, it probably was too much.

And the moment it played 8.Nxe6...

I knew it was over. 

You knew it was over immediately?

I knew it was over and I wanted to finish as soon as possible.

I knew it was over and I wanted to finish as soon as possible.

The series also has one episode which is almost completely about your 1984 match with Anatoly Karpov. And I think they use it to sort of show that you basically had experience with dealing with forces that you were not supposed to fight. I think they were sort of comparing the organizers, the regime maybe that was behind Karpov and doing everything including stopping the match to avoid him losing to you and sort of making a parallel  with IBM being behind everything and doing everything to avoid losing to you. Do you see parallels there yourself?

Look, in the Soviet Union, it was a system that I had to fight. IBM was also a system. Naturally, for IBM, it was more about business. Yeah, it was science, but not chess, as I already mentioned, parallel processors... But otherwise, it was a big coup. I think IBM shares rose 22 percent in two weeks. And even more important, I think it got its reputation as the sort of cutting-edge technology company. So it was a massive victory. And of course, for them, doing well in this match, that was, at the time, the most publicized match in the world. The year before in Philadelphia IBM was not an organizer, it was the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Game one, that I lost, broke all the records. I think there's some kind of phenomenal numbers of people on the Internet. For them that was a wake-up call, like, wow, for a relatively small amount of money we can get phenomenal publicity.

So in 1997 there was already the IBM PR machine working on it. So, yeah, it was a system. With Karpov I had time, you know, just to recover. This long unlimited match here, again, I didn't have a day in between game five and game six, just to give me time to sleep, to clear my mind. It's very emotional. I mean, you are defending humanity. Remember, the cover of Newsweek said 'the brain's last stand' and the reports on cable news, this is humanity versus AI. Actually, nobody mentioned AI. It was more like the computers. Now they talk about 'the dawn of AI,' which I always say it's nonsense because Deep Blue was as intelligent as your alarm clock. It was not about intelligence, it was massive brute force.

I also listened to your talk, I think it was with Lex Fridman, where you basically explained that if you look back at it... I wonder if you still feel this way because [this podcast] has been a while already, but back at the time, as it was always like from the early days with Turing and Shannon, chess was of course seen as the way of testing intelligence. It's like the small laboratory for testing and showing that the machine might be intelligent. And then maybe we were still thinking that way in '97 and that's why people were also maybe suggesting that this could possibly be the end of chess being played in the first place. And now, 27 years later, we feel that it's only a limited form of intelligence. And I think you said that the machines are basically just better at avoiding mistakes than humans in this limited game that chess is, and we have to be more ambitious if we talk about developing intelligence, right?

Yes, that's the main thesis. It's in my book Deep Thinking, and I keep repeating it in every presentation that I do these days on humans and machines. It's about collaboration, not competition. By the way, you said limited game? I mean, I'm not sure. 

Well, limited in the sense that it's a closed game with perfect information, but of course it's not that limited.

Yeah, because people think limited... As we know, according to Claude Shannon, the number of all the moves is 10 to the power of 120, and the number of legal positions, this number contains 46 zeros. That's a pretty big number. It's not about machines ever being able to solve it, but it's simply about machines making fewer mistakes and avoiding mistakes. And that's the difference. You can't say that AlphaZero or even Stockfish or other programs understand chess better than GM Magnus Carlsen but the gap is still, what, 600 points? When you look at 3400 versus 2800, 2850. It's simply because the number of mistakes they make is just minimal compared to humans.

You can't say that AlphaZero or even Stockfish or other programs understand chess better than Magnus Carlsen but the gap is still, what, 600 points?

And to win a game against the machine, I mean, you can survive, but winning the game, the level of precision that is required to win a game against a computer is unheard of for humans. Because we always make inaccuracies, That's the way we play. With a machine, even the smallest slip from the main road, and either you're dead, or you can miss a win that could be reached if you just look deep and calculate everything with unheard precision for human chess.

The one thing that actually was brought to my attention was from my old friend, GM Elmar Magerramov, whom I met a few times in Dubai where he lives. We started in the '70s in Baku, we are old friends. He  told me about 15 years ago, maybe 10, he brought my attention to the seven-pieces databases. And I remember the position that he threw at me. It was KRRN vs. KRR, seven pieces. And it said something like, mate in 510 moves or whatever, an insane number. And of course when you look at this sequence of 500 moves the first 450 moves you can hardly understand what's happening. Even for my eyes it was just like a never-ending dance, kind of a tango around the board and then it was, ahah, now I could see the framework of what's going on. The question that Elmar asked, which is still bothering me, he said Garry, if you have position with seven pieces and with best play it ends up with checkmate in 500 plus moves, and the opening position in chess is the ultimate endgame with 32 pieces, and the average duration of a human game of chess is under 50 moves, doesn't it give you an idea what kind of chess we play, what kind of quality of chess? [Laughs.] If you start judging it by the highest standards...

And it also means that the engines, as we also see in Fischer Random by the way, the engines also probably have a hard time understanding how we are playing the game.

It's amazing, but I always enjoy it when we play this 960. Sometimes it's move two already and then you say, Black is already better. [Laughs.] It's interesting because we thought for a moment that, I definitely thought for a moment that with 960 we would have some kind of an edge. To the contrary, it's much worse because the machine doesn't care. The machine doesn't care about the geometry. But the human eye was so much trained, you know, you're aware of those patterns. You start playing chess and you learn that after 1.e4 e5, f7 is the weakest, f7 and f2, you know exactly where the pieces can go, how they can harm you. And then everything changes. And even if you play the same position, it is still very difficult to recall. Even a small change, to shuffle one piece or two pieces, it could actually change every geometry. The machine picks it up instantly. From the machine's perspective, it just doesn't matter.

I definitely thought for a moment that with 960 we would have some kind of an edge. To the contrary, it's much worse because the machine doesn't care.

Let's discuss this, by the way, because you have now played a few of those tournaments. We're recording this interview roughly a week before you're behind the board again for Chess960, they call it 9LX in St. Louis. How are you looking forward to that? I mean, it's not going to be the first time. Usually you say you don't have much time to prepare. 

For me, it's great entertainment. I have fun. It's an opportunity because it's a passion for the game that doesn't die. It's still with me. And probably I'm abusing my old glory because by my current standards I'm not supposed to play the strongest players in the world. But again, it gives me great pleasure and sometimes, you know, I can bite.

Probably I'm abusing my old glory because by my current standards I'm not supposed to play the strongest players in the world. But again, it gives me great pleasure and sometimes, you know, I can bite.

There's a fundamental problem I know I cannot overcome. It's kind of blackouts. That's what I discovered in 2017. I actually did some preparation, I was curious. Because in 2015 I played with Nigel [GM Nigel Short], I won quite handidly, and in 2016 I played this not official tournament in St. Louis with GMs Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura. And I played well, it was not terrible. In 2017 I said, let's try. I started slow, but I was quite pleased. I didn't feel very comfortable because I had to play top players. The first round was GM Sergey Karjakin, the second was Nakamura. Actually I was better with Nakamura, I had a much better position. The third was a draw with GM Leinier Dominguez, the fourth I missed a win against GM Levon Aronian. And then round five, the big game with GM Ian Nepomniachtchi.

And it's the first time I experienced this total... All of sudden, I think I was nearly winning, okay, a much better position, and then I took on d7 with the pawn instead of taking with the bishop and two minutes later I thought, where is my pawn? But the worst thing happened against GM David Navara.

Yes, that was an absolute heartbreaker.

I played a very good game, an excellent game. And then it just, it's all of sudden, you know, it's a blackout. So that's what keeps happening. And that I cannot control because...

And you've kind of come to accept them by now, maybe?

Not accept... Last year, I had a great start. I played very good. I beat So, I beat Robson [GM Ray Robson], I drew with Nakamura, I drew with Aronian. I mean, that's a good start. And round five, you know, playing GM Jeffery Xiong, so that's my former student, both of them are actually my former students. So, 20 years earlier, in the beginning of the century, 20, 25 years earlier, I would have won this position with my eyes closed. [After a first mistake] I still could make a draw and again, all of sudden another blackout and then I just couldn't recover. The next round I had an extra pawn against Caruana at move 10. It's not winning, but I had an extra pawn, a healthy extra pawn, and I found a way to lose the game.

So, hopefully not too many of those moments in the coming week.

It will be fun. And I always play a few training games with GM Peter Svidler. Actually, I do much better against Peter when we play online. I'm not [under pressure]. Because somehow it's very unusual, you sit there, you play. Actually, I have to touch the pieces, because all I do is play online. And somehow it influences me. So when I look at the quality of games I play with Peter versus there, the comparison doesn't make me feel happy.

The great @Kasparov63 back at the board for @STLChessClub’s Ultimate Moves (and 9LX the next three days). pic.twitter.com/wYyYhaohX6

— Peter Doggers (@peterdoggers) October 27, 2024

Last question. This Chess960 thing is actually sort of having a revival. There's going to be a Freestyle tour next year, with Magnus and the German entrepreneur Jan-Henric Buettner setting it up. To what extent are you happy to see this? Because I always felt that you're still more of a fan of the actual classical chess. But how do you look at that development?

I think anything that helps the game to be promoted has my full support. So 960 is a way forward because again, people want to see some freshness. There's a problem now with classical chess. Under no circumstance I'm trying to tell you that the game must be abolished, for me because classical chess is like opera. It's probably 0.1 percent of all the music in the world, but you need it to be preserved. But now we saw the developments, the main trend. Because of the computers, professionals, with very few exceptions, they try to avoid the sharpest lines. That's why you have deviations in the opening, so many, these Berlins with taking on c6, the fixed pawn structures where the machine preparation doesn't play a role. When you move to the Sicilian, only MVL I think keeps playing the Najdorf. But still, even there there's 6.a3. I think classical chess must be preserved and it has to keep its place, but we just have to be creative.

It's again, following what you describe in your book, about the chess revolution. The strength of the game is its unique ability to adjust, always to follow the trends in society, like this shifting to the queen, the queen is powerful because of Queen Isabelle, all of a sudden the queen becomes powerful. It's something that I described in, I think, Volume One of My Great Predecessors, that you can always see that chess moved alongside the global development, scientific, social development. And now again, it's speed.

You can always see that chess moved alongside the global development, scientific, social development. And now again, it's speed.

And also again, it's variety. So that's exactly what rapid chess and 960 offer. Again, it brings more people in. I think it's something that we just have to support and enjoy. I'm always watching the tournaments where Magnus is playing, when I have time. You may consider I'm probably the strongest kibitzer in the world!

Looking for more Kasparov? Note that recently the Chessable course of his book My Great Predecessors − Part 4: Fischer was released!

See also:

• 'Rematch' Miniseries Revisits Famous Kasparov vs. Deep Blue Chess Match