Garry Kasparov for President

Garry Kasparov is renown as one of the best grandmasters in chess history. Among his accomplishments are becoming the youngest World Champion at 22 years old, winning the most Chess Oscars with 11, and holding numerous chess ranking records. Perhaps he is best known for taking on the best computers engineers could design for chess, playing Deep Thought & Deep Blue (produced by IBM), Deep Junior, & X3D Fritz in highly publicized "man versus machine" matches.

In July 1979, as a teen, first FIDE rating was 2545 - a score good enough to rank in the top 20 US rankings today. His last FIDE chesscard lists a ranking of 2812 - down a little from higher rankings a few years ago of 2851 - its highest ranking ever. Presently there is only one player ranked over 2800 among current top players. Chessmetrics, a chess statistics website, ranks Kasparov as the top rated player from 1985 through 1995 continuously.

Want to vote for the Grandmaster for President? Move to Russia!
Today I learned Kasparov will run for President of Russia. Apparently, he is an outspoken critic of Vlad Putin and founded The Other Russia, a coalition of forces for change in Russian leadership. Given the infamous conspiracy theories linking Vlad Putin to the recent Alexander Litvinenko radioactive assassination, it would appear Kasparov has to have some defense against old guard KGB protecting the Soviet power hierarchy.