structural:expansion
Introduction to chess

Kasparov began the serious study of chess after he came across a problem set up by his parents and proposed a solution. When he was seven years old, his father died of leukaemia. At the age of twelve, Kasparov, upon the request of his mother Klara and with the consent of the family, adopted Klara's surname Kasparov, which was done to avoid possible anti-Semitic tensions common in the USSR at the time.

From age seven, Kasparov attended the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku and, at ten, began training at Mikhail Botvinnik 's chess school under coach Vladimir Makogonov. Makogonov helped develop Kasparov's positional skills and taught him to play the Caro–Kann Defence and the Tartakower System of the Queen's Gambit Declined. Kasparov won the Soviet Junior Championship in Tbilisi in 1976, scoring 7/9 points, at age thirteen. He repeated the feat the following year, winning with a score of 8.5/9. He was being coached by Alexander Shakarov during this time.

In 1978, Kasparov participated in the Sokolsky Memorial tournament in Minsk. He had received a special invitation to enter the tournament but took first place and became a chess master. Kasparov has stressed that this event was a turning point in his life and that it convinced him to choose chess as his career: "I will remember the Sokolsky Memorial as long as I live", he wrote. He has also said that after the victory, he thought he had a very good shot at the world championship.