The chess genius is now planning his greatest game - bringing down the Russian President. And for the man once dubbed 'the Beast of Baku', it will end, for the moment, in certain defeat. But this is just his opening gambit

Next March, Russia will hold its presidential elections. There are only two possible outcomes. Either Vladimir Putin's yet-to-be-announced successor will triumph or Putin will change the rules and continue in power for a third term. There is no opposition worthy of the name, yet there is one fiercely determined opponent and his name is Garry Kasparov.

Last Monday, the former chess world champion was chosen by the Moscow branch of the coalition group called Drugaya Rossiya (Other Russia) to lead them in the elections. He'll almost certainly lack sufficient support to be allowed to take part in the main election. In other words, he is certain to lose.

If nothing else, that is a novel competitive expectation for the man once dubbed the 'Beast of Baku'. For 20 years, from 1985 to his retirement in 2005, Kasparov dominated world chess. So great and unprecedented was his talent that he ruled the board as if by divine decree. He was king of the 64 squares.

During this period, it was his opponents who were invariably forced to accept the likelihood of defeat. 'Most of them,' as he once observed, with characteristic immodesty, 'have a devastatingly bad record against me.'

Britain's Nigel Short spoke in awe of Kasparov's 'weightlifter's energy' - and that was before he was crushed by it in their 1993 World Championship match. Victory was his devoted companion. The rare setbacks he suffered were shocking enough to trigger days, even weeks, of brooding and recrimination.

So why is this born winner, and notoriously bad loser, putting himself up for an odds-on wipe-out? After all, he has no material need to be a politician. He is a wealthy man with a home in New York, where he lives for part of the year with his third wife, an economics graduate. He has a column in the Wall Street Journal and an enviably cosmopolitan lifestyle.

He makes a very comfortable living writing books about chess and giving lectures to business people and combining both as a sort of guru of board game-board room wisdom - his latest book is called How Life Imitates Chess. He could walk away from Russia and scarcely anyone would raise an eyebrow. He would avoid defeat, which is rather like gaining a draw. And a draw, as Kasparov once said, 'is closer to a win'. Instead, he's looking at something that is closer to complete humiliation. Except Kasparov does not see it like that.

'What we're saying,' he explained in an interview with the New Yorker last week, 'is we won't win now, but when the regime collapses, be aware we are here.'

It's an extraordinary downsizing of ambition for someone who never displayed much in the way of career patience. 'I've changed my routine and my focus,' he said, 'but I haven't lost my fighting spirit.' Which is just as well.

Born Garry Weinstein in 1963 in Baku, in the then Soviet state of Azerbaijan, Kasparov had a Jewish father and an Armenian mother. His father died when he was seven and his mother, Klara Kasparova, became and remains his inspiration and most loyal fan. She and former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik guided the prodigy to greatness. But despite establishing himself as the finest player in history, the half-Armenian, half-Jew was always going to struggle to endear himself to nationalist-minded Russians.

Especially as Kasparov is more charismatic than charming. He doesn't really do humility, though there is none of the bureaucratic arrogance, the indifference to accountability, that animates the cold contempt of Putin, the former KGB colonel. Kasparov is always prepared to argue his case.

In 1984, when he first squared up against the then world champion Anatoly Karpov, the darling of the communist regime, Kasparov drew on the anti-Soviet sentiment of many Russians in what proved to be a victorious campaign.

But now the prevailing sympathy is pro- rather than anti-state. After the Wild East days of the Nineties, when Boris Yeltsin allowed a grand-scale looting of national assets to take place, Putin has successfully exploited Russia's vast mineral wealth, and high energy prices, to place the economy on a more solid footing. The massive foreign debt has been paid off and standards of living are improving.

Still, say many observers, the plundering has not stopped under Putin. It's simply been made subject to tighter Kremlin control. For Kasparov, it's a distinction without a difference. He believes that Putin has made himself a billionaire and is perhaps the wealthiest man in Russia.

Whatever the volume of Putin's fortune, there is no question that he has silenced oppositional voices. Regional governors are no longer elected but appointed by the President. Television networks have been effectively placed under state control, political parties are little more than glorified social clubs and many opponents of the regime are imprisoned or, as in the case of a more than a dozen journalists, dead.

As a precaution, Kasparov spends thousands of pounds a month on security. He never eats in unfamiliar places and avoids flying with the state airline, Aeroflot. 'It doesn't help in the end if they really decide to go after you,' he said. 'But, if they did, it would be really messy. And not just because of the bodyguards. There would be a huge risk for the Kremlin if anything happens to me... because the blood would be on Putin's hands.'

The regime prefers to manage Kasparov by maintaining a close vigil of his actions and restricting his access to the wider media He insists that his phones are tapped and it's a fact that he is seldom shown on television. On the rare occasions he does make it on to the screen, he is usually shown talking in English to emphasise his alienating 'foreignness'. Another stifling tactic is the disruption of his meetings by government-backed nationalist protesters. One Kremlin-supported youth group, Nashi (Our) has proved particularly enthusiastic in its denunciations of Kasparov as an American placeman.

Neither has it helped his cause that he is a hero to many US conservatives. In 1991, he received the Keeper of the Flame Award from the Centre for Security Policy, a neocon think-tank, which is given to those 'who defend American values around the world'. What is perceived as his strength in America is seen as a weakness in Russia precisely because it's appreciated by Americans.

In return for all the state-approved obloquy that comes his way, Kasparov displays a heartfelt loathing of Putin. 'I think simply that the man doesn't fit the position,' was his withering assessment when I met him in 2005. Dressed in a cravat, like a character out of PG Wodehouse, he sat on the edge of his chair as he spoke as if he couldn't wait to put things right. 'Putin is creating unique conditions for oligarchs to rob the country and take money outside, providing they pay their dues to the regime.'

The problem for Kasparov is that his liberal agenda of transparent democracy, freedom of speech and civil rights is not one that sets the great melancholy heart of Russia beating with pride. In the minds of many Russians, liberal democracy is strongly associated with the corruption of the Yeltsin years.

Fearing a communist comeback, Kasparov backed Yeltsin, even though it had become plain that he was hopelessly compromised by booze and the larcenous gangsters who surrounded him. Kasparov now acknowledges that he was 'dead wrong', a phrase that his younger self would have almost impossible to form, let alone say.

It seems the lesson he has learnt from this acknowledged error is compromise. Perhaps the most striking sign of this new diplomacy is the informal alliance he has formed with Eduard Limonov's neo-Bolshevik party.

Limonov is a one-time alcoholic novelist in the Charles Bukowski mode, dismissed by Solzhenitsyn as 'a little insect who writes pornography'. After a stint in the States, he formed the National Bolshevik Party in 1994 and called for liberals to be sent to the gulag.

'You have to work with the people who live here,' Kasparov says.

To what end remains uncertain. Kasparov is in no doubt that the most important duty for a politician in Russia is to fight the current regime. 'As a big fan of Tolkien,' he once said, 'I believe that there is absolute evil but there is no absolute good in this world. The Lord of the Rings is about this simple truth. There are moments when everybody who shares the same values must be united to fight absolute evil, which does exist.'

He was talking about the righteous cause of the invasion of Iraq at the time, an opinion that he subsequently appears to have revised, but it's clear that he applies the same outlook to the need to remove Putin and his cronies. King of the squares and The Lord of the Rings: it sounds like an unbeatable combination. But for most Russians, it's the same old story and, no matter how hard he tries, Kasparov may never be its hero.

· Born Garik, or Garri, Weinstein 13 April 1963 in Baku in the former Soviet Union. His parents were Kim Weinstein, who died when Garry was seven, and Klara Kasparova. He changed his name to avoid problems of anti-semitism in Soviet chess.

· Best of times Beating Anatoly Karpov, the Communist party's favourite, to win the world chess title in 1985.

· Worst of times Losing in 19 moves to IBM's Deep Blue computer in 1997. Kasparov maintains that the computer was rigged. Three years later, he lost his world title to Vladimir Kramnik.

· What he says 'Today, I have to be careful not to become cruel, because I became a soldier too early.'

· What others say 'Chess for Garry was never a game. It was about living and dying, about redefining the art every time he played.' Biographer Fred Waitzkin

'You can expect anything with this regime and Kasparov has been very vocal and very personal in his criticism of Putin. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about something terrible happening to him. And where will the evidence be? Remember that Trotsky's assassin, Ramon Mercader, was sent to get him in Mexico by the KGB and was secretly made a Hero of the Soviet Union. No one knew the truth for decades.' Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general