On January 13, 35 high school students and 22 teachers met with President Peter Pellegrini and Minister of Education Tomáš Drucker in the presidential palace. But while receiving awards for participation in international Olympics 19-year-old student Simon refused to shake hands with the president.
The famous chess player Garry Kasparov (60) also noticed the video of the young man wearing a ribbon in Ukrainian colors on his jacket. and shared it on his social media account X with a short but to the point comment. To the post added emoticons of clapping hands and the Ukrainian flag. Kasparov was the world chess number one for more than 21 years. He made Russia famous with his championship, or Soviet Union. Currently living in exile, he is a staunch critic of Putin and the Russian regime, which has branded him a foreign agent.
Garry Kasparov was born as Garik Kimovich Weinstein on April 13, 1963 in Baku – the capital of Azerbaijan, which at that time was one of the union republics of the Soviet Union. His mother was Armenian, her maiden name was Klara Šagenovna Kasparjanová, father Kim Moisejevič Weinstein was of Jewish origin. When Garri was seven years old, his father died tragically and his mother later changed her name to Kasparov, which he also adopted. When he was seven years old, he started playing chess at the House of Pioneers in Baku. He immediately attracted attention.
In 1975, he became the youngest winner of the prestigious junior tournament in the USSR. He received the title of grandmaster at the age of 17. In 1980, he won the Junior World Championship in Dortmund. In 1984, he met the then world champion Anatoly Karpov in a title match. The exciting fight lasted six months and is the longest in chess history. He was finally stopped by Florencio Campomanes, then president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), who ordered a new date for the match. In November 1985, Kasparov already won over Karpov in the ratio 13:11 and became the youngest world champion at the age of 22. In total, Kasparov was king of the chessboard an incredible 22 times.
In 1993, he founded his own chess organization PCA (Professional Chess Association) in protest against FIDE, which he sharply criticized and withdrew from its structures. At the time of his greatest glory, on May 11, 1997, he was beaten by the IBM Deep Blue computer. In 2000, he was then defeated by compatriot Vladimir Kramnik, who, however, subsequently avoided retaliation.
Kasparov spent 255 months as world number one, which is almost three times more than his biggest rival Karpov. He started eight times at the World Chess Olympiad and won gold eight times for the USSR, later for Russia. After his career ended, he founded a chess academy in the USA. In 2007, the Daily Telegraph ranked him 25th among the world’s 100 living geniuses. He ended his active career on March 10, 2005.
Kasparov profiled himself as a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime. In June 2013, he announced that he would not return to Russia due to concerns about his safety. In the spring of 2014, he obtained Croatian citizenship. After Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the outbreak of civil war in eastern Ukraine, he compared the “dictatorship of one man” – Russian President Vladimir Putin – to the rule of Adolf Hitler and warned that if the West does not stop him now, he will pay much more in the future.
After a twelve-year hiatus, Kasparov decided to return to professional chess in 2017. He presented himself at the August rapid and blitz chess tournament in the American St. Louis. At the event on August 16, he was defeated by compatriot Jan Nepomňaščij. Kasparov immediately responded to the military conflict that Russia started against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, saying: “It is a tragedy for my country. Thousands of young Russians are dying because of this crazy dictator.” Chess grandmaster Kasparov also spoke about civil society in Russia as a guest at the meeting of EU foreign ministers on February 20, 2023.
