Kasparov retires from professional chess

Garry Kasparov, who has sat atop the chess world for more than 20 years and is considered by some to be the best player ever, is retiring from professional play.

The 41-year-old Russian grandmaster, ranked No. 1 since 1984, made the stunning announcement after winning the 14-match Linares tournament in Spain on Thursday.

"Before this tournament I made a conscious decision that Linares 2005 will be my last professional [tournament], and today I played my last professional game," Kasparov told a news conference.

He said his last games were "very difficult for me to play under such pressure, because I knew it was the end of the career which I could be proud of."

Kasparov said part of the reason he was retiring was because he saw no real goals left to accomplish in professional chess.

He said he will continue to play chess, write books about it and take part in speed-chess games or knockout tournaments, in which he plays many opponents at once. However, he's finished with top-level championship play.

Shay Bushinsky, who programmed Deep Junior, one of Kasparov's famous computer opponents, said Friday that the grandmaster is "the closest thing to a computer that I know as a man. Sometimes I think he has silicon running in his veins."

"Kasparov has the most incredible look-ahead and memory capabilities I have ever seen," he told Associated Press.

Bushinsky said his resignation was "in the cards" because of frustration with chess's politics and organizational problems.

Kasparov, who was the youngest world champion ever, has expressed increasing exasperation over the bitter divisions that split the professional chess world in 1993 into two rival federations, each with its own champion.

At the news conference, he again voiced disappointment with a failed campaign to reunify the title.