Garry Kasparov on Vladimir Putin and why chess is simpler than politics.

For someone who sees so many moves into the future, his decision to take on Putin in 2005 was reckless and ill timed, the political equivalent of a kamikaze dive when the regime was at its most popular and most repressive – before it was chastened by the economic collapse of 2009. “[Politics] was a different game [from chess],” he says. “But although it was different, I had to play. There’s not much you can do, if you believe, as I do, that it is a very important moral choice.” Kasparov was vilified and Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth group, famously produced door mats emblazoned with Kasparov’s face for “patriotic” Russians to wipe their feet on. He was also hounded for supposed collaboration with the CIA. “I used to play chess expecting to win,” he says, “but this game [politics] was not about winning or losing. It was about losing. From the beginning the position was a dead loss.”
 By Charles Clover / Slate / more