ChessBase 17 - Mega package - Edition 2024
It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it. Start your personal success story with ChessBase and enjoy the game even more.
By Rich Pelley
The chess grandmaster, 58, on growing up in Baku, Putin’s bloody dictatorship and losing to Deep Blue
My mother was Armenian, my father Jewish. My father died when I was seven and my mother never remarried. She lived the rest of her 50 years for me. It’s the greatest thing that happened to me – I had a mother who dedicated her entire life to her only son.
I grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the deep south of the USSR. Everybody spoke Russian because it was an imperial city. At 10, I was sent to the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku to learn how to play chess. It didn’t take long for me to see the gap between reality and propaganda.
I was the first from my class to take a trip abroad, to France, when I was 13. Travelling was a big deal, even inside the Soviet Union. Travelling to other, capitalist countries was unheard of.
Whether you spell Garry with a G or an H in Russian, you still pronounce it with a strong G. I was named after President Truman – Harry – whom my father admired for taking a strong stand against communism. It was a rare name in Russia, until Harry Potter came along.
