The people behind the game
Garry Kasparov
Spent 255 months at number one in the FIDE rankings. He broke with FIDE in 1993, so from then on his title was the classical line, not the FIDE one.
- Born
- 1963
- Country connections
- Soviet Union / Russia
At the board
The games. The ideas.
Explore classic encounters and championship battles. Play every move, or jump straight to the moments that tell the story.
1985 · World championship · Game 16
The knight on d3
In game 16 of the 1985 championship, Kasparov’s knight occupies d3 and his pieces dominate the open lines.
Read the position
Every move sets the scene.
Use the controls to explore the full game, or select an annotated moment below. Each explanation describes the position immediately after its highlighted move.
Complete move list 40 moves
The journey
A remarkable path.
Kasparov defeated Karpov in 1985 and remained champion through the 1993 division of the title. He lost the classical crown to Kramnik in 2000 and retired from regular competitive chess in 2005. His writing includes the My Great Predecessors series. [1]
From the photographic archive Explore the championship record →The championship record
Time with the crown.
- 1985–1993Undisputed world championship
- 1993–2000Classical world championship · split era
Reigns are periods of title ownership, not a count of championship victories. Open-ended reigns reflect the record checked on 18 October 2026.
From the archive
A life in photographs.
Continue exploring
More from the collection.
1997 · Deep Blue vs Garry KasparovDeep Blue vs Kasparov, game 6
The game that decided the first match a reigning world champion lost to a computer. Kasparov allows a known knight sacrifice in the Caro-Kann and resigns after nineteen moves.
Sources & credits
Biographical details and title records checked . Country connections describe the player’s career and background, rather than a live federation listing.
Portrait: Fryta 73 from Strzegom · CC BY-SA 2.0. Displayed in monochrome and cropped.
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