Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the Soviet Union in 1963, Garry Kasparov became the Most under-18 chess champion of the USSR at Age 12 and the world under-20 Winner at 17.
He defended his title five times, such as a legendary collection of games against arch-rival Anatoly Karpov. Kasparov broke Bobby Fischer's rating record in 1990 and his own summit rating record remained unbroken until 2013. His famous matches against the IBM super-computer Deep Blue in 1996-97 were key to bringing artificial intelligence, and chess, into the mainstream.
Kasparov was among the first notable Soviets to call for democratic and market reforms and was an early supporter of Boris Yeltsin's push to split up the Soviet Union. In 1990, he and his family escaped cultural violence in his native Baku since the USSR collapsed.
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