Chess master Kasparov to retire
Former world champion Gary Kasparov has announced that he is to retire from competitive chess.
He made the surprise announcement after winning a prestigious tournament in Spain for the ninth time.
"I will continue to play chess because it is a lot of fun, but no longer on a professional level," he said.
The 41-year-old said he had made the decision because of the intense pressure which he had been under over recent years.
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.
His group, called Committee 2008: Free Choice, has criticised Mr Putin's control over Russia's parliament and the country's media, and what it calls the "flat-out falsification of the last election's results".
They have vowed to ensure a new president is elected in 2008.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4338719.stm
The best chess player ever and a liberal! Wow, maybe all the bad things I heard about GK were just rumors. Like I said in the Chess Only thread, it's a crying shame that his last professional game should be a loss. Well, he did win the Linares against the best players alive, and until Topalov caught up with him at the end he was on a rampage.
If Kasparov keeps his promise of retiring (you never know with him) maybe unity can be restored in the chess world.
But who knows this is a publicity stunt in the context of getting sponsors to fund the upcoming matches for the World Championships .... or he is simply performing some tricks to get things done the way he wants them to be done. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
