Chess Master Kasparov To Retire

fembots writes "Former world champion Gary Kasparov has announced that he is to retire from competitive chess. The chess grandmaster, a leading critic of Mr. Putin, heads a group of top Russian liberals who have joined forces to keep Vladimir Putin from staying in the Kremlin after 2008."

Re:Kasparov To Retire....

[Tablizer]

IIRC, Deep Blue has already been retired. After their first win, IBM decided they already got enough PR value out of it, and besides Kasparov's team accused IBM of bending some of the rules. Future games may have been tougher for blue if more restrictions were placed on it.

Re:Please Note

[shutdown -p now]

And here [komitet2008.ru] is a link to that committee in which Kasparov participates.

Re:a sad day for chess

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not dead.... he's just resting...

Re:Please Note

[gordgekko]

You would be well served by relying on more then a dictionary definition of the word "liberal." I have several historical texts I can loan you that would disabuse you of the notion that socialism and liberalism are compatible.

More stuff

[phantomfive]

Here is a link [chessbase.com] to a more lengthy article with more information, including a video clip. Seems Kasparov, despite still having the best rating in the world, is retiring out of frustration with the FIDE. He's going to write a few books, including How Life Imitates Chess, in addition to politics.

Re:More details and a video clip

[barath_s]

Clicky, clicky ... http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=225 8 [chessbase.com]

Re:Deep Blue

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

WOPR (since you asked)

Re:Please Note

[mothlos]

Liberal in the international political sense are ideologies limiting government intervention in the activities of the governed. Clinton in the U.S. and Blaire in the U.K. are generally considered moderate liberals. Strong liberals have many different parties, but in the U.S. the largest strong liberal party is the Libertarian party.

Left refers to ideologies which reflect increased government intervention in economic matters generally with the goal of increased egalitarianism and decreased intervention in the social behaviors of the governed.

While communism is a leftist ideology, Soviet style communism was largely statist, conservative, or totalitarian in nature meaning ideologies supporting increased control of both economic and social matters.

The final major compass point in political ideology is Right. Right (the direction, not meaning correct) parties have ideologies favoring decreased government intervention in economic matters and increased intervention in social matters. These parties often focus around their reactionary policies to social change, particularly in the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. Republican party is a party on the Right.

Re:Celebrities and Elections

[Scarblac]

The Week in Chess report on the press conference [chesscenter.com].

He's retiring because he's been the top player for the last 20 years, he is the best ever, last year he won the Russian championship for the first time so he's won everything there is to win, most of it many times, and he can't see any new challenges. The mess in FIDE and the constant mess around the world championships sucked a lot of his energy, he'll just play for fun from now on.

Politics is one of the things he's going to do in his newly found free time, but it's hardly the main story.

*Sigh* Here is to the uninformed

[Anonymous Coward]

Kasparove has long been a very well known and influential figure in Sowjet/Russian politics. In the sowjet area he was one of the best known critics of the system and a champion of democracy, so he already has political standing. (Btw., him being opposed to the system and Karpov very much being part of the system was one of the things that really spiced up all of their duells then.)

Now on to Putin. It's not only about Putin getting reelected, but about Puting changing the constitution/breaking the law to be able to get reelected. Like in the US the President can only be reelected so many times and Mr. Puting will not be allowed to run again in the next election. However, there are many that fear that Putin will somehow find a way to circumvent this "little inconvenience" and run nevertheless, or at least find an other way to stay in control.

This would very clearly deal the deathblow to what is left of democracy in Russia nowadays and fighting against this happening certainly is a noble cause and should be commended.

Finally, not that I'm really a good chess player, but it is sad to see a giant like Kasparove step down. He will be missed by everyone interested in chess I'm sure.

What about Advanced Chess?

[FleaPlus]

I'm curious to see if Kasparov will continue to be involved with Advanced Chess [wikipedia.org], a new form of chess which he introduced. Basically, in it a human and computer program compete as a team against other human-computer teams. This symbiosis is much stronger than either member alone, as humans and computers are better at different aspects of chess. It's thought that Advanced Chess tournaments may help further human-computer interaction [betterhumans.com].

Re:Please Note

[PsiPsiStar]

Not nessicarily.

Some people take liberal to mean the same as progressive or leftists, which is another dictionary definition.

Libertarians are what some would call "classic liberals."

Re:Please Note

[Cody Hatch]

No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..

You sadden me. There are two (2) diverging branches of liberalism. In most of Europe and Britain, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the original branch (usually called "classical liberals"), in most of the US, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the much more recent "social liberalism" branch).

All "serious" US parties have at least a tiny amount of "classical liberal" in their genetic makeup, but the Greens have almost none, the Democrats only a small amount, the Republicans a fair bit (particularly on economic matters), and the Libertarians are almost pure classical liberals.

The order is reversed if we look at "social liberal" principles - the Libertarians have almost none, and the Greens think about little else.

For most Europeans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Libertarians, Britain has no "liberal" party, Germany has the Free Democrats, New Zealand has the ACT, and so on. (Note, incidentally, that all those parties are rabidly free-market, and usually favor a flat income tax - core ideas for classical liberals, heresy to US-style "liberals".)

For most Americans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Greens, Labor in Britain, or any of several parties in Germany or Britain.

If you're interested in classical liberalism, check out John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" - a great book which pretty much defines classical liberalism, but has very little to do with the modern Democratic party - because the modern Democratic party simply isn't classically liberal. Also check out this page [wikipedia.org] for a decent discussion and more background.

(Mind you, I think both threads could probably agree that Putin is bad, but if the original author was European, he was probably thinking of views that in the US are popularly called libertarian.)

Re:If it's not a stupid question...

[guacamole]

Anyone born in the Soviet union could become a Russian citizen with relative ease. Besides, I am sure he was already spending much of his time in Russia before the breakup of the soviet union. Also Baku was a fairly cosmopolitan city before the break up of the soviet union with very large Armenian and Jewish communities living in it. After break up of the soviet union, most of the Jews left to Israel and nearly all of 200.000 Baku Armenians had been forced to leave Azerbaijan because of government sponsored pogroms against them. And I don't see why the ethnicity should be a factor that determines whether someone should or should not involve in politics in such a diverse country as Russia. It might not be well known outside but in many parts of Russia there are fairly large numbers of Ukrainians, Jews, Georgian, Armenians, and others living there (in addition to minorities native to Russian therritories such as those from north caucasus.)

Re:Upgrade

[oconnorcjo]

Nah!! Grandmaster Gary for President!! Imagine strategic armament talks between Bush and Gary!! ROFL! Gary will have Bush doin' the monkeyboy dance in no time!!

Actually I would be very concerned if Gary became the leader of any organization. He has DESTROYED every organization in which he has had power.

GMA - ever heard of it? It was an organiztion to help GM's get better purses and conditions for tournaments. Garry helped create it and then completely destroyed it (with no help needed).

FIDE - Almost destroyed FIDE and to this day FIDE is a much weaker organization. When Garry said I am world champion and the title is mine no matter what FIDE says and does, he cracked the "legitimacy" of FIDE. In This case Gary had help from Nigel Short.

PCA - An organization Garry created to give a world championship title. Got sponsorship from various companies including Intel. Eventually destroyed the organization because he wanted to play deeper blue. Goodbye PCA.

Ever since the PCA was destroyed, Garry has stayed away (or been kept away) from powerfull positions in chess orgs. and chess is much better for it!

I would be very concerned about Russia's Leadership if Garry Kasparov was ever elected president.

Re:*Sigh* Here is to the uninformed

[shutdown -p now]

However, there are many that fear that Putin will somehow find a way to circumvent this "little inconvenience" and run nevertheless, or at least find an other way to stay in control.

A small (but important) addition: presidential party "United Russia" currently has parliamenal majority. This means that they can change the constitution if they so desire, to extend president's term, or allow him to re-elect for the third time.