Garry Kasparov

Born Garik Weinstein in 1963, Kasparov became the youngest undisputed world champion at 22 in 1985 by beating Anatoly Karpov, then defended the title three more times against him. He held the world No. 1 ranking for a record 255 months and posted a peak rating of 2851 in 1999 that stood as the highest ever until Magnus Carlsen broke it in 2013. A 1993 dispute with FIDE led him to form a rival body, the Professional Chess Association, splitting the title until he lost to Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. In 1997 he became the first reigning champion to fall to a computer - IBM's Deep Blue - in a match that made global headlines. He retired from competitive play in 2005, wrote a landmark history of his predecessors, and pivoted to opposition politics, co-founding movements against Putin's government and running unsuccessfully for president in 2008 before withdrawing amid what he called official obstruction. He fled Russia in 2013 fearing persecution, settled in New York and Croatia, was labeled a foreign agent by Moscow in 2022, and now leads the Renew Democracy Initiative from abroad.