Re: Garry Kasparov
He would be a superb poker player -- far more so than most chess legends.
Look at his games and you'll see a ton of aggression, putting people on the defensive again and again. But you'll also see that he controls risk extremely well. Other GMs known for their attacking (Tal, Mecking, etc.) overdid it a lot and sometimes just got hammered when the attack didn't work out quite the way they hoped. It's chess's version of TILT.
Kasparov has a gift for seizing the offensive but not creating exploitable vulnerabilities in his own position. Dunno if he'd want to thrash his way through big tournaments. And after years of grimacing at the chessboard, he might be very easy to read. But his game-playing instincts (separate from his number-crunching acumen) are superb.
|