Kasparov on Achieving Potential

On December 6, 2025, the National Scholastic Chess Foundation (NSCF) and Kasparov Chess Foundation (KCF) presented Mindsets: The New York Chess in Education Conference. World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov delivered a special address connecting lessons from elite competition to everyday teaching and learning. He reflected on how chess education will evolve as society transitions from an era where all knowledge can be accessed from a mobile phone to an AI-driven world where we can outsource even our thinking and on how we should be prepared for this eventuality. The following is a lightly edited transcript of his speech.

Sunil just reminded me of the good old days. It was a long time ago. I just recently celebrated my 40th anniversary as the World Champion of chess. I’m not sure that you know that every anniversary just makes me even happier. Hopefully I will celebrate the 50th one day.

I was asked to talk today about preparation and achieving your potential, and I got a bit confused because I’m not sure whether we’re talking about top professional chess or about very general aspects of the game. I know many of you are involved in education, so I’ve been struggling how to combine it. But let’s start.

Now I feel a bit odd because I always call myself the highest-rated amateur in the world. I don’t play professionally, but I still can bite—even the top chess players. I understand that chess has been viewed as a game, as a board game to pass time. For me it’s a bit odd because it’s still about winning and losing at the end of the day.

Of course, we enjoy it immensely by playing it, but anytime we lose, we get upset. Unfortunately, lately I’ve gotten more upset than joy playing the game. But still, it’s very important to teach kids, to teach your students, that the game is about realizing your potential, which means you try to show the best you can.

The Challenge of Modern Technology

These days I think we are dealing with problems that were totally unknown in my days when I played professionally. I’m talking about these devices (smart phones). Let’s say it’s a brand-new game—literally a brand-new game—because we have access to all data available.

When I grew up in the Soviet Union back in the 60s and early 70s, one of the challenges was how to find the data. It was a serious challenge.

I still have my old notebooks from when I was eight or nine, writing down games. Very often we could hire a book and then you just had to take the data from the book. I even had—I treasured—a little chess printing set from East Germany that my coach Alexander Nikitin sent to me. I was very proud that I could actually print a diagram and then make a little book.

When I showed it to my kids recently, they just said, “Seriously? You wasted your time.” I said, you know, this is interesting: is it a waste of time, or did it basically teach me how to be disciplined? Because somehow, I used to work with this data and collect the data, so I treasured it.

Now when you just slide your finger, you think it’s just coming from heaven.

That’s probably the biggest test: easy come, easy go.

So now, how can we make sure that the data—which, again, is in abundance, it’s available everywhere—will have the biggest impact? I think this is the challenge for everybody, whether we’re talking about kids, or whether we’re talking about the top players. It’s very difficult to escape from the overwhelming influence of the screen.

Do I know the answer? No, I don’t know the answer, but we have to try.

After I left professional chess, I worked with a few top players. I can tell you that I spent more than a year working with Magnus Carlsen back in 2009, early 2010. I was quite impressed by one thing that I believed would make him the absolute greatest: he was probably the only one that I saw from the top who could easily separate himself from the screen, looking at the screen more like a calculator. “This is it, yes, I know that’s the right thing. Let me check it”—not as, “Oh, I have to look at the screen for advice.”

Again, it’s a unique quality, but very few people can escape this overall influence of a computer. I think that’s what we should look for: how to make sure that this data is being used to help kids, whether they’re preparing for a school team championship or for professional chess competition. How can they actually recognize that this data has to be processed?

It’s about finding the balance, which is very difficult, but I think that’s how you can—with probably limited success—tell them all the time: you look at this, but it’s not just about “I play; they play,” because, you know, instinctively—and it’s not just about chess—we always try instinctively to find the answer here on the screen.

When you play, there’s no device to help you—okay, unless you’re cheating, of course. But there is no device to help you. That’s why you have to start looking at this from the lens of a human, not a computer. It’s a gigantic task, and that’s what I think is our top priority: how to make sure that we keep the uniqueness of human ability to evaluate the position, to understand the underlying reasons, even at a time when we believe that any answer can be found on the screen.

Abstract Categories and Human Understanding

One interesting thing from my experience of working with the top players is that very often when you talk about the position, when you talk about your preparation, with any aspect of the game of chess, it’s always in connection with the computer. “Why is the move bad? Because the machine said so.” The reasons? I mean, I also recognize this: it’s on the screen—the machine shows +0.5, and then you make a move and it’s all of a sudden –0.1. But I don’t evaluate in these numbers. For me it’s just—because I have a weak spot, I guess—because of the activity of my pieces. Again, these are very different, very abstract categories.

I think the “abstract category” is something that is missing completely, and these abstract categories, they are real. When we just had books, it would say, “Okay, this is a weak pawn. This is how you attack it. You have to create a second weak spot to diversify your attacking tools and also to divert the resources of the defense.” Those are the categories that, in my view, have to be brought in.

Maybe sometimes just asking to write it—you know, writing is almost a forgotten art. I think that’s important: just write it. This is something that could help you. It’s a little bit repetitive, it’s not fun, but that’s how you discipline yourself. Because when you go to the game, it’s your mind. We just have to make sure that when the game is played, when the tournament is in progress, the mind is not totally enslaved by these computer images and recommendations.

Again, it’s probably a losing streak. Probably we are doomed. But I’m an optimist by nature—an incorrigible optimist by nature, as you can guess—and I believe that we still have to find this middle ground, the golden formula.

The Importance of Personal Engagement

Going back to the days when I just played professionally: actually, Sunil asked me something—”Garry, were you the first one who actually had a team behind you?” I mean, it’s not true, of course. Karpov had a much bigger team. The entire Soviet chess school was behind him. But what I did—and that’s important—is, though I had a smaller team, still big—when I played Karpov I had four or five seconds working with me against his probably 40—at the end of the day, what’s important is probably there’s a parallel with what we’re discussing: I managed to have a better outcome because I was fully engaged in that.

If you simply show up—as I guess Karpov did—”Please give me an idea,” and then “I evaluate,” I was very much the brain of the whole process. I can proudly say that not a single idea that I ever used was not generated by me. I could throw out the seed, and then they could continue, but it was very important I was involved.

Again, you can probably make a parallel with the team that I’ve been working with—four or five coaches—and the current challenge with the computers: it’s about making sure that the idea comes from you. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a suggestion, but the mere suggestion is very important—it comes from you, and then you develop it. This is the key: you are not receiving it from the side; you are a generator. That’s very challenging, but that’s how you maximize your potential, because we all have phenomenal potential.

I think the challenge today is that the computers—okay, they offer us phenomenal tools to realize our wildest dreams—but at the same time, they can block our potential because we lose our creativity. Keeping this spark of creativity, that’s the secret. That’s the most important thing.

When I was coming to the end of my professional chess career, I had only two or three coaches, but every time we worked—I remember when we sat in my summer camp in Croatia, I had Yuri Dokhoian and Alexander Shakarov—I never had a computer next to me. They had computers. I never had a computer. I just had to generate something. That made us more equal. They were empowered by computers, but the key was that I was always working with the chessboard.

The Physical Connection with Chess

To summarize what I said: it’s very important that your analysis is done on the chess board, physically moving the pieces, and spending some time analyzing the games, talking about the games, replaying the games—not on the screen, but physically on the board. I think it’s very important to keep the connection with the pieces, to keep the connection with the game.

Again, I think this is our model, this is our challenge, but we have to find the best formula. I’m not predicting the end of the game of chess. Look—everything has been already developed, as we all know. The position that has been the starting position for centuries is now mere number 518 out of 960. Which means there are 959 positions available. But it’s not about the opening position; it’s about the beauty of the game.

Focus on Endgames

I think much can be done if we start revealing the secrets of the game—not concentrating on the opening position. One of my final pieces of advice for any improvement of the players, whether they play at the school level or at the top level, is looking at the end of the game: the endgame. Many typical things that we learned as kids have been forgotten. Very often now we have databases—four pieces, five pieces, six pieces, seven pieces. I’m not sure if they’re doing eight now, but they have not finished eight yet. They’re on the way to completing eight; it will probably take some time.

But it doesn’t matter. The computer is one story, but what about just enjoying the beauty of chess geometry? There are so many great things where chess is connected to general education: the chessboard, the way the pieces move, the geometry, the opposition. So many great things can be taught.

Conclusion

Again, I think we should remain optimists, but at the same time make sure that we are not overwhelmed by modern technology, and we will find the best of two worlds. I have no doubt that you’ll be up to this challenge. I’m happy now to answer your questions, because I believe that with this kind of experience, I have to start a dialogue.

Click here to view this presentation on Youtube.