In 1999, one man sat down to play everyone. Not a handful of chosen grandmasters — everyone. Garry Kasparov, the world champion, took the white pieces against the planet, and the planet almost won.
The game ran on Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone from June 21 to October 22, 1999. Kasparov made a move every other day. The rest of the world, playing black, voted on its moves. More than 50,000 people from over 75 countries took part. For four months, the strongest player in history faced a committee of strangers, and by his own admission, he had to work harder than he ever had for any single game.
Lesson one: you don't need novelty to play the Sicilian.
Kasparov opened 1.e4, and the crowd answered with the Sicilian Defense by a 41% plurality. He expected it — it had been his own favorite for years. Brushing aside the sharp 3.d4 lines he feared he'd need against Viswanathan Anand in their coming world championship match, he chose the quieter Canal–Sokolsky Attack instead. The point isn't the obscure name. It's that the world picked a principled, fighting opening and stuck to it. A sound, well-understood setup is a weapon even against a legend. You don't beat strong players by surprising them; you beat them by playing valid chess they can't exploit.
Lesson two: a good defense creates problems, it doesn't just survive them.
The world's moves were steered by four young coaches — Étienne Bacrot of France, 16; Florin Felecan of the US, 19; Irina Krush of the US, 15; and Elisabeth Pähtz of Germany, 14 — under moderator Danny King. The group played with ambition, not fear. The 15-year-old Krush and her colleagues found 10...Qe6, a genuine innovation that startled Kasparov. They fought him all the way into a bizarre promotion race that threatened a rare four-queen endgame. The lesson holds for any tournament game: passive, defensive-only chess hands your opponent the initiative. Ask questions, and the champion has to answer them.
Lesson three: endgames are decided by single tempos.
For a stretch, the world genuinely had drawing chances. Then precision leaked away. The losing slips arrived late — the impatient 51...b5 instead of the calm 51...Ka1, and 54...b4 when 54...Qd5 would have held. Kasparov then steered a textbook win: 62 moves, clean promotion, done. This is the part amateurs skip and champions live by: opening and middlegame drama is fun, but the game's outcome often lives in the quiet endgame, where one wasted move is the whole difference between a famous draw and a defeat.
Lesson four: chess is not a popularity contest.
The crowd was brilliant and messy at once. Votes stalled under ballot-stuffing suspicions. A controlled experiment by analyst Martin Sims single-handedly pushed five percent of the vote behind one move. An email glitch near the end kept Krush's correct reply from being posted in time, and a bad move won instead. Microsoft even overturned the final resignation vote on grounds of stuffing. The honest lesson: strong moves often aren't the crowd-pleasers. In your own games, decide on the board, not on emotion.
On October 22, with Kasparov's pawn on its way to a queen, 51 percent of voters chose to resign. Kasparov said the real winners were everyone who played — and then admitted he'd quietly read the crowd's strategy forum during the game. The greatest player of his era needed every advantage he could find against the collective. That should humble the rest of us — and it should make you respect the power of careful, patient chess.