Garry Kasparov, known by many as the greatest chess player of all time, became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at the age of 12 and the World Junior Champion at 17. He then became the youngest World Chess Champion in history in 1985 at the age of 22. His 1984 World Championship match against Anatoly Karpov was controversially ended after 48 games with no clear victor. Kasparov clinched the rematch in 1985 and secured his place in chess history. He held on to the title of world’s highest-rated player until his retirement from professional chess in 2005.

His book Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins details his highly publicized matches against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue and his research on human and machine competition. While his rematch with Deep Blue ended in defeat, Kasparov believes these matches were key to bringing chess into the mainstream.

Garry didn’t become a Grandmaster overnight, but as a child he demonstrated a remarkable gift for the game of chess. He learned by watching his parents play and was soon challenging his uncle and solving chess problems in the newspaper, much to his family’s surprise. 

Here are my favorite take aways from viewing the Garry Kasparov’s Masterclass Session on Chess.