“On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long”
— Emanuel Lasker

He was once a World Chess Champion. He went down in history as the thirteenth FIDE champion, the youngest champion, and ruled for eight years as undisputed best player in the World. He then discovered the seductive charms of politics and founded his own chess association, within which he was also a champion until Vladimir Kramnik abolished it. Today, he is mainly involved in politics and is the president of the Foundation for Human Rights. His name is Garry Kimovich Kasparov…

Have you heard of him? His peak rating was 2851, and he retired from active playing in tournaments in 2005 and devoted himself entirely to politics. Unfortunately for him, he did not get along as well in political lying as in the chess truth. As Lasker said, there is no cheating in chess. And Garry tried to get back to chess on the Grand Chess Tour in Croatia. The worst mistake of his career…

It was a Rapid & Blitz tournament, in which the home grandmaster Ivan Šarić, after an excellent performance in the rapid, gave Garry a place in the blitz. And there it was shown how harmful toxic politics is to the chess thinking: Garry won only two and a half points (and in numbers, yes, you’ve heard well: 2½) in 18 games, recording in the process probably the worst defeat in his career – in just seven moves!

The first day was especially bad for Gary. Apart from securing only one draw in the first nine games (with Grishchuk), he experienced a blitz-debacle in the game against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

It was very short game, so I won’t take up much of your time. And it all started quite normally – the Queen’s gambit accepted in its oldest variant, which children learn at their first chess steps:

Quite an innocent position played for centuries and hundreds of thousands of times, both with open and closed eyes. Shakhriyar quite naturally takes back the pawn developing the Bishop, and then… like thunder from the clear sky, Garry plays ‘developmentally’, placing the Knight at the tragic f6…

It looks completely naturally, but truth be told, it was difficult to choose anything worse in this position. Instead of immediately playing 5… ♝b4+ and exchanging dark square Bishop to remove the White Queen from that dangerous short diagonal d1-a4, Gary allows to Mamedyarov a textbook double threat to pawns on f7 and b7. And to make the surprise greater, Gary continues in a ‘gambit’ style, making whole new blunder:

The game can no longer be saved, but 6… ♝c5 at least could save the honor. Unfortunately, Garry had already dropped through the floor.

I must admit, I am impressed how Mamedyarov, despite the undoubted shock of watching what the former champion is playing on the opposite side of the chess-board, cold-bloodedly pulled the last move – castling!

Black resigns because he can no longer prevent material losses or make up for developmental deficiencies. Infamous end of a champion, but let’s give him at least a chance to justify himself:

So, as a retiree, he played against hardened professionals?! The stew was additionally salted by the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, with his comment on Twitter:

So, we’ll have to forget the chess grandmaster and former champion, Garry Kasparov. All that remains of him is an empty political shell without special significance. This is the current Gary Kimovich Kasparov…

You can read more about this unusual event at the https://chess24.com portal under the title Kasparov’s darkest day.