🇭🇷 Garry Kasparov: "The grandmaster title has become inflated" Garry Kasparov on how chess has changed over the years and the growing number of grandmasters: "Eight, nine, and ten year old children are now beating grandmasters. Perhaps that means that not all grandmasters today are 'real' grandmasters. On the other hand, this is nothing unusual. When I was a child, it was very difficult to compete against adults who were more complete players. That meant it took a long time to reach chess maturity. Nowadays, children start playing chess much earlier. They can study games on their computers. They play a lot and gain experience that way. They receive online coaching. But we have to admit that the grandmaster title has become inflated. In the past, you knew every grandmaster by their first name. When Walter Browne received the grandmaster title in 1971, there were only two of them. He told me that there was a big debate at the time about whether the other person really deserved the title. He was the World Junior Champion, but that was about it. And do you know who that second person was? Karpov. I have absolutely no idea how many grandmasters there are today. Perhaps there are around 2,000, which doesn't mean I'm downplaying their achievements." 📷 Lennart Ootes