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I was just killing time. It occurred to me that I didn't know
much about the personal life of the most influential chess player of my
lifetime, Garry Kasparov. So, I looked around and found that much of this
personal information wasn't quite so easy to locate. What I thought would take
me 5 minutes, took me a couple hours. And I wasn't even asking for much, just
some basic facts.
Here's what I found.
Garryck Weinstein, born on April 13, 1963 in Baku, the capitol
city of Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union, was the son of Kim
 Moiseyevich
Weinstein and Klara Shagenovna Kasparova. When Garryk (or Garri) was 12, his
father died in an automobile accident. Soon after, Garryck changed his name to
Garry Kasparov (reflecting that of his mother while adding a Russian flavor to
it). Garry had learned to play chess from his father at 5 years old and at the
age of 7 was admitted into the Young Pioneer Palace, a more specialized Soviet
educational system that promoted various disciplines including those of sports,
sciences and culture with an added stress on socialist ideology. By the time his
father died, Garry had spent almost 2 years in the famous Botvinnik School of
Chess where he caught the eye of Botvinnik himself.
Kasparov, age 5
"The future of chess lies in the hands of this young man."
Spoken by Mikhail Botvinnik - when Kasparov was 11
Kasparov, of course, became the youngest World Chess Champion
and is widely regarded as the best player in the history of the game. But
despite all this, his private life isn't well publicized. The best I could find
in a short time is vague, leaving exact dates and certain names questionable.
Garry Kasparov was married three times and has one child from
each marriage.
His first marriage was to Masha in the early 1990's. They had
one child, his daughter Polina, who was born in Helsinki either late in 1993 or
early in 1994. Masha and Polina live in New Jersey. A court order (a legal
battle that was being fought at the time of Kasparov's historic loss to Krammnik)
forbids Polina from visiting Kasparov in Russia where it was feared she may be
detained.
Polina Kasparov
His second marriage was to Yulia (Julia) with whom he shares his
son, Vadim, born in 1997. They live in Moscow.
Julia and Vadim
Garry, Yulia, Vadim and Klara
His current wife, with whom he shares a daughter, Aida (born in
December, 2006), is the former Daria (Dasha) Tarasova. They also live in New
Jersey according to a New York Times article, but another Times
article claimed they spend time at Kasparov's flat in New York City. Either way,
the reason for being in America is to be out of harm's way.
Dasha Tarasova Kasparov
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