Kasparov Resigns

Former world chess champ and thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side Gary Kasparov has called it quits : He will not continue his bid for the Russian presidency as the ” Other Russia ” candidate.

Kasparov has been a none-too-subtle critic of what he considers a thugocracy in the original Russia. But it seems that opposition to opposition has made a viable candidacy untenable, to the point where Kasparov couldn’t even rent meeting space.

At least he didn’t admit to using performance-enhancing drugs during his bout with Anatoly Karpov in 1985.

(He was definitely off the juice against IBM’s Deep Blue —at least in their 1997 match-up. For a fascinating and lawsuit-worthy interpretation of that debacle, I highly recommend Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine . It makes the whole Black Sox scandal of 1919 look positively inspiring.)