Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov: 1 Hardcover

This three-volume autobiographical series includes the greatest battles fought by the greatest chess player of all time: Garry Kasparov. It describes Garry's meteoric awakening, from playing beautiful and intense games at ten years old, until those that took place in 2005, the year he retired, all of them analyzed by himself, with great technical rigor and with endless details reflecting his evolution both inside and outside the board. To the eternal question of whether geniuses are born or made, the text answers for itself: The chess atmosphere of the Soviet Union in his formative years, his mother’s determination to support him unconditionally and his ‘gift’, could all have contributed to it, but the culture of work, the tenacity and the spirit of overcoming made Garry Kasparov an irreplaceable genius.

In this volume, Garry Kasparov analyzes the most fascinating encounters held between 1973 and 1985. This period begins in Bakú, his hometown, and ends with his first confrontation for the throne of the world with Antoly Karpov, his eternal rival, in a gigantic encounter that lasted over six months.

In Russia they knew that Kasparov had an extraordinary talent, but the first time that talent became obvious to the Western world was in 1979. The Russian chess federation  received  an invitation to send a player to participate in a tournament in Banja Luka. Under the false impression that this was a minor event, they sent a fifteen-year-old Kasparov (without even an international classification!). Far from being a junior tournament, Banja Luka was a strong international event with top-level grandmasters. It was attended by Petrosian, Adorjan and Smekjal, among others. Unperturbed, Kasparov finished in first place, achieving 11½ out of 15 possible points and ending two points ahead of the second classified.

During the following decade this abyss between Kasparov and the rest of the best chess players of the time became an everyday show in the major tournaments of the