What does it take to be a GrandMaster in Chess?

Grandmaster chess requires a temperament of unqualified audacity and a personality impervious to suffering and disaster. At any particular stage of a Grandmaster game, the player can decide that he is lost or simply can’t solve the problems he faces.

A picture of Gary Kasparov at the Boylston Club shows him in absolute or feigned agony in the middle of a critical stage of a chess game. It is no wonder that most Grandmasters give up serious tournament play by the age of 40 and settle for teaching and occasional appearances thereafter.

Kasparov had the temperament to dominate chess play for nearly 20 years and even to navigate political problems in conniving and playing his way to the world championship. Yet he has had the impertinence, the chutzpah, to retire from chess and enter the world stage of international intrigue. He needed new goals so he chose to challenge the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia. In this situation, it is not his chess King that is at stake; it is his whole future and possibly even his life. Assassination by Putin would create international problems, but nationalists in Russia are carrying out assassinations.

In 2007, Kasparov gave an interview in which he explained that he spends a lot of his time in Croatia, on the estate of a German friend. There he enjoys a peaceful existence, with access to the ocean for exercise. He has one bodyguard there. He said he has a home in Moscow where he maintains five bodyguards. In the meantime, Putin has firmed up his control of Russia. Kasparov is waiting for the equivalent of a blunder over the chessboard. Will he get it or will Kasparov face fiasco?

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