Kasparov was born in 1963 in Baku. His father, Kim Weinstein, was Jewish, and his mother, Klara Kasparova, Armenian. When Garry was around six, he picked up an endgame puzzle in the newspaper and solved it, even though he didn’t yet know the rules of chess. “Since Garry knows how the game ends,” his father said, “we ought to teach him how it begins.”
The next year, Kim Weinstein died, of cancer. Garry started to play chess obsessively. In those days, chess was a Soviet obsession and the regime sponsored an elaborate network of chess academies; Garry started to train at one run by the former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik. At the age of twelve, Garry was attracting national attention in chess, and he took his mother’s family name. “When I began to have public success at chess, it seemed natural,” he said. “My teacher, Botvinnik, himself of Jewish ancestry, added that it wouldn’t hurt my chances of success in the U.S.S.R. not to be named Weinstein.” The next year, he played his first tournament abroad, and by eighteen he was the Soviet champion, surrounded by admirers and under endless pressure to perform.
