Garry Kasparov
(RUS) GM 2830

Garry Kasparov was born in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, on 13 April 1963. By the age of six, his talent had already been recognised.

At 13 Kasparov was crowned the Soviet Junior Champion and at 17 he became the junior world champion and an international Grand Master.

At the 1984 World Championships in Moscow, Kasparov was destined to meet the reigning world champion, Anatoly Karpov. Karpov promptly won the four games of their first eight, needing just one more victory to retain his world title. But then Ksaparov held Karpov to 17 consecutive draws, forcing FIDE to cancel the match after five months, citing exhaustion by both players.

A year later, Kasparov came back to defeat Karpov and make history as the youngest ever world champion, at age 22. Kasparov later successfully defended his title against Karpov in 1986, 1987 and 1990. He has also shaken off the challenge of England's Nigel Short in 1993 and India's Viswanathan Anand in 1995.

But Kasparov became better known to the general public in 1996 through his historical six matches against a computer specifically designed for the purpose by IBM and called Deep Blue. In this thrilling pitting of the human mind against a super-computer that could make thousands of calculations in a second, Kasparov won 4-2. The following year he competed against an improved version of the computer, called Deeper Blue, and was defeated 3½-2½. It was the first time that a Grandmaster had lost a series of games to a computer.

Zurab Azmaiparashvili
(GEO) GM 2702

Zurab Azmaiparashvili was born on 16 March 1960 and started playing chess as early as four years old! At the age of six he gave his first simultaneous display. He is fond of recalling the moment when at nine years of age he was playing Moscow during the Petrosian vs. Spassky world championship match in 1969. Petrossian, the reigning world champion, visited his Young Pioneers tournament and stopped at Azmaiparashvili's board. After watching his game for a few minutes, he announced to the young player that in 2000 he would be the world champion.

At the age of 13, Azmaiparashvili was crowned the U18 Georgian champion. In 1978 he was the U18 Soviet champion and a year later the silver medalist at the European Junior Championships.

Azmaiparashvili earned his Grand Master title as late as 1988, due to a lack of international tournaments. His biggest success, he claims, came at the 1998 Chess Olympiad, where he finished with a fantastic performance of 2810, but had to content with second place.

Azmaiprashvili is deeply involved with the development and organisation of chess, as a co-president of the Georgian Chess Federation and a vice-president of FIDE, the International Chess Federation, but still remains very active in the game, participating in tournaments worldwide.