Chess luminary Garry Kasparov announced today that he has retired from professional chess. The news has some personal significance to me not just because I've always considered Kasparov something of a hero (I remember clipping his games with Karpov from the New York Times and playing through them as a child), but also because several of my first posts here were about Kasparov's match with Deep Junior. I remember getting a lot of pleasure out of writing those posts, and also the important (and portentous) realization that I could write about pretty much anything I wanted in a blog context.
Perhaps I'll update this post later with more links; for now the AP article is excellent, although it very diplomatically sidesteps the contoversy surrounding Kasparov's loss to Kramnik in 2000 and his subsequent (and frustrating) attempts to get a rematch.
I actually got to meet him once--sort of. The national high school team championships were held in my hometown during my sophomore year, and our team finished in the top 10 of the speed chess portion. Kasparov came on the last day, and all the teams that won trophies got their pictures taken with him, so I got to shake his hand. I didn't say anything to him, but just being in his presence was pretty extraordinary.
That's cool. You must be a decent chess player (probably a lot better than me). We should play sometime, maybe via email?
Haggai -- sorry I seem to have lost your comment. I was messing with the database over the wknd, and I may have ended up reverting to a backup from before you posted.
Also, sorry about UK!
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