Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess Grandmaster considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time. The former World Chess Champion is also a well-known writer and political activist. He was catapulted to international acclaim in 1985 when at the age of 22, he became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion 22. He achieved his peak ranking of 2851 in 1999 which was the highest ever recorded until surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Kasparov was first introduced to chess when he was a young child. He took to the game seriously when he was just six years old and began training under noted coach Vladimir Makogonov when he was ten. Makogonov played a vital role in developing the boy’s positional skills and taught him to play the Caro-Kann Defence. He won the Soviet Junior Championship in Tbilisi at the age of 13 and won his first international tournament at the age of 16. Other successes followed and he defeated the reigning world champion Anatoly Karpov in 1985 to become the youngest official champion in the history of the game. In 1996 Kasparov defeated a powerful IBM custom-built chess computer known as Deep Blue but lost to the machine in a rematch in 1997. He has since retired from professional chess and is now more active in politics and writing.