Vladimir Kramnik

◇From Tuapse to the Botvinnik school

Kramnik was born in 1975 in Tuapse, a town on Russia's Black Sea coast, to a Ukrainian mother who taught music and a Russian father who painted and sculpted. In Kramnik: My Life and Games, co-author Iakov Damsky describes his father teaching him the moves at four. At five he was attending the chess club at the town's House of Pioneers; in his third year at school he won Tuapse's adult championship (pp. 5–6).

Kramnik recalled that a local chess enthusiast wrote to Botvinnik without his parents' knowledge, recommending the eleven-year-old candidate master. Botvinnik asked to see his games, and an invitation followed. At his first Botvinnik–Kasparov school session, in Druskininkai in 1987, Kramnik worried that he would be weaker than the other pupils; he found himself in the middle of the group. His first chess book had been a collection of Karpov's games, and comparing Karpov's play with Kasparov's teaching helped him see that very different approaches could succeed. He was already seeking a style that combined positional play and tactics (pp. 8–9).

He burst onto the world stage. At the 1992 Olympiad in Manila, still only a FIDE Master, Kramnik was a controversial pick for the Russian team, one Kasparov himself pushed for, and he justified it with 8½ from 9 and the gold medal for the best individual performance of the whole event. By January 1996 he had become the youngest player ever to top the world rankings, sharing Kasparov's 2775 rating but ranked above him on games played, a record that stood until Magnus Carlsen broke it in 2010.

Championship rules also mattered to him. Kasparov records in My Great Predecessors, Part V that Kramnik declined to enter FIDE’s 1997 knockout after Karpov was given direct admission to its final. He presents the decision among leading players’ protests against that advantage, several years before Kramnik won his own title.

◇Work and life beyond chess

In the same book, Kramnik described needing quiet to work: “I need complete solitude.” He preferred studying late at night and distinguished creative analysis from the technical work of keeping up with new games. Reviewing roughly ten thousand games each month could occupy three or four days; inventing ideas was the part he enjoyed most (p. 11).

He also wanted room for life outside chess. Damsky tells of the young Kramnik living away from home, with little money and growing tired of sandwiches. He began making soup with whatever was available — tinned meat, sausages or cheese — and friends came to call it “Kramnik's soup.” Even after he could afford better meals, they remembered its particular taste (p. 12).

◇The Berlin Wall: dethroning Kasparov

In the autumn of 2000, in London, Kramnik challenged Kasparov for the Classical World Championship — the title Kasparov had held since 1985 and defended against all comers. Kramnik's weapon was a shock: the Berlin Defence to the Ruy Lopez, a solid, slightly passive old line that steered the game into a queenless middlegame where Kasparov's attacking genius had nothing to bite on.

“The Berlin Defence suited my strategy for the match.” In his November 2000 interview with John Henderson, Kramnik explained that he had prepared sharper alternatives too, but the defensive approach was working. He won the match 8½–6½ without losing a game. Kasparov's fifteen-year reign was over, and the line earned a nickname that has outlived the match itself: the Berlin Wall.

◇Holding and unifying the crown

He defended the title the hard way. In 2004 at Brissago, Péter Lékó led him into the final game needing only a draw to take the crown; Kramnik won that last game to level the match 7–7 and keep the title by the narrowest possible thread.

Then, in 2006 at Elista, came the match the chess world had waited a decade for: a reunification contest against Veselin Topalov to merge the Classical and FIDE titles, split since 1993. It was overshadowed by the bitter “Toiletgate” dispute, in which Topalov's team accused Kramnik of irregular bathroom visits; Kramnik refused to play game 5 under the altered conditions and forfeited it in protest, yet still fought back to 6–6 and won the rapid tiebreak 2½–1½. With it he became the 14th undisputed World Chess Champion — the first man to hold both crowns at once since the schism began.

◇The architect of opening theory

Kramnik became known for deep preparation and strong endgame technique; he once went some eighty games in a row without a loss. His influence on the openings was particularly lasting. He turned the Berlin Defense, the Petroff, the Catalan and the Grünfeld into main battlegrounds of elite chess, often years before they became fashionable. In a 2011 WhyChess interview, Anand credited Kramnik with a greater contribution to opening theory than his own.

His annotations could be much less flattering than his reputation. In Kramnik: My Life and Games, he presented his 1999 win over Jan Timman at Wijk aan Zee twice: first as an apparently faultless rook ending, then as an analysis exposing mistakes and missed drawing chances. He revealed that the polished account was a parody. His conclusion was that “the play of both players in this game was far from ideal.” He nevertheless enjoyed analysing the ending's complications (pp. 253–254, game 173).

The title finally went in 2007. Kramnik lost it not in a match but at the 2007 World Championship tournament in Mexico City, finishing second to Anand; his 2008 return match in Bonn ended 6½–4½ to Anand, though Kramnik won game 10 in fine style. He stayed at the very top for another decade, reaching his peak rating of 2817 in 2016, the second player in history after Kasparov to pass 2800.

◇Illness, retirement, and after

For years Kramnik played through ankylosing spondylitis, a painful inflammatory arthritis of the spine, before treatment brought it under control. He married the French journalist Marie-Laure Germon in Paris on the last day of 2006, with a church ceremony following in early 2007; they raised two children and made their home in Geneva.

In January 2019, after a difficult Tata Steel tournament at Wijk aan Zee, Kramnik announced his retirement from classical chess. He turned to teaching and to research — working with DeepMind on artificial-intelligence studies of the game, including experimental variants such as no-castling chess designed to refresh a theory he himself had helped exhaust. The champion who had built walls spent his later years trying to open the game back up.