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Twelve years ago, in the Observation Deck of the World Trade Center in New York, Garry Kasparov, trailing his young Indian opponent, Viswanathan Anand, 4-5 in the final of the Professional Chess Association world championship match, chose to walk out of the room and slam the stage door shut in a deliberate and dramatic show of emotion after making each of his moves in Game 10.
What kind of effect this piece of gamesmanship may have had on Anand is debatable. Yet, in hindsight, it is obvious that Kasparov was trying to prove a point; trying to prove that when it comes to getting pumped up for the occasion, when it comes to a show of aggression, he was one up on his young challenger.
In a sport where you cleverly move tiny pieces on a 64-square board to get the better of your opponent, a sport where trying to rearrange your opponent’s jaw is not a favoured option, that (slamming the door) was as much as Kasparov could have done by way of a show of aggression.
In Kasparov’s case, the aggressive edge apart, he was also seeking something else _ an enemy. He desperately needed to find an enemy, a role into which the suave, softly spoken Indian he was playing did not seem to fit.
