Garry Kasparov: preference

Transcript context

…Very good by your standards. He was very good by any standard, and that makes him unique, whether he was top 100 or not, but somewhere there in the world at his peak in the mid-’70s. I don’t think that the aptitude of playing chess is anything but aptitude for playing chess. There’s no universal rule. Some people could move to other areas. I was very, very lucky that I grew up with my mother, who helped me to get education outside of chess. I always had various interests and looked for life in its entirety. That’s why after I stopped playing professionally in 2005, then already with the help of my wife, I could move from chess to other areas. Now I have a very full life without playing chess professionally. But that’s not the rule. That’s not happening with other players. Some of them, I’m sure, could do extremely well. By the way, some of them were very good businesspeople. Some of them made good investments, if you look at some of the British grandmasters or other players in Europe. No rule, but I think chess helps some of them to find the right approach to their new endeavor. It may not be specific. For instance, I’m more of a humanitarian, so I prefer history, literature. I guess I’m a good speaker, but I’m not as good in number-crunching. It’s very important to understand what you’re good at. That’s where chess helps you, to recognize what is your strengths and also to be very open about your own weaknesses. Perhaps you may recall your 1999 game against Topalov. At a key moment in that game, you play Rxd4. When you played Rxd4 and made that sacrifice, did you see at the time the later brilliant moves coming up: your c3, your Bf1, your Rd7? Or did you just feel there’s going to be something that comes up? How much was it one or the other?…

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