All in mind Garry Kasparov hesitated. He then wriggled his neck a bit and mopped his brow. And then he held out a tentative hand, the old fashioned way of letting his opponent know that the world chess champion was conceding defeat. At the other end of the table, 25-year-old Vladimir Kramnik, - Number two in the chess world but still a relative unknown - showed his first real emotions of the match which had stretched on for more than a month at London's Riverside Studios. He jumped up and punched the air with both fists. Kramnik is normally so calm that sports journalists call him 'The Iceberg', but this was a day that he was going to savour forever. He had just won the best of 16 game series 8.5 - 6.5, and made his mark in history as the man who had ended the tenure of Garry Kasparov, the world's longest reigning chess champion. Chess lovers could see the irony. For it was the pupil outhinking the tutor. Kramnik was only ten when Kasparov first won the crown 15 years ago. He reigned uninterrupted since then, the longest in 50 years, before being humbled by the boy he had first spotted as an 11-year-old and then specially trained. The association continued all these years. It was at the ex-world champion's bidding and backing that Kramnik got a place in the 1992 Russian squad for the chess olympics in Manila. Kramnik helped his team win the Gold Medal and picked up an individual Gold as well. He had the best overall score of 8.5/9. The pupil had matured enough to take on the difficult and demanding role of an able second when Kasparov's world title was challenged by Briton Nigel Short in 1993. The two worked wonders in tandem and the challenge was easily quelled in a short time. Two years later, India's Vishwanathan Anand, carrying the expectations of over 900 million countrymen, was similarly humbled by the same invincible combination. Since then, it was Kramnik who had steadily emerged as the main challenger to the Big Boss. Kramnik, one of the best in blitz chess and in playing blindfolded, played Kasparov in a match in 1998 in Moscow. It was a blitz - a five-minute-chess match - that ended in a 12-12 tie. By then, Kramnik had firmly established himself as the man most likely to dethrone his guru. Yet few thought it would be so fast, and so soon. Most chess experts and grandmaster felt that the 37-year-old Ajerbaijani, now a Russian national, was still a cut above the rest and that Kramnik needed a few more years before he could really take him on. Many experts, in fact, felt that Kramnik would not win a single game. In retrospect, what many have missed out on was Kramnik's fast flowering game. It is also beyond debate that Kramnik - calm, measured and objective - mounted a brilliant challenge. Not losing a single match out of 15 against one of the most creatively aggressive players of the world is a shining testimony to a rock-solid defence and tactical acumen. Kramnik's success has also left many wondering whether it was his back-up which had actually made Kasparov so invincible in the challenger contests against Short and Anand. 'Kramnik is a great processor of information. One gets the impression his brain just soaks up tons of information and he organises it all smoothly and efficiently. When it comes to finding his path through the complications, he has a very clear head,'' a chess expert writes. He is also said to spend hundreds of hours deconstructing other games at night, like a true supernerd. 'My brain works perfectly at night. If chess matches were played at that time, I would already be world champion,' he had once said, much before he became the world champion. 'I have a very stable nervous system and you could also say I have a cold brain,' he adds. Kramnik also likes to claim that he is 'a Russian Orthodox Christian' and wears a silver cross at all times. There is also a bit of Luddite in him. For years, Kramnik stubbornly refused to use the computer, now an inseparable part of every chess player's mind accessory. Instead, he used to move his pieces on the board and note down the variations in a pad. Chess players point out that while he has excelled in tournament play, his match record - till London - was not as good. He was eliminated from the 1993-96 PCA World Championship Cycle by Gata Kamsky in the quarter finals and by Gelfand from the FIDE version. And in the 1996 World Championship match in Gronigen, Kramnik refused to play, maintaining that Karpov had been given too big an advantage by being allowed to go directly to the final. With Kramnik's triumph, the crown passes on to another colourful and charismatic character. Both chesslovers and administrators will like that. Kramnik may not have the charisma of American Bobby Fischer but he is certainly not as bland as fellow citizen, Anatoly Karpov. Kramnik stands six feet, three inches tall and has an impish smile. Fond of volleyball, Kramnik used to smoke cigarettes in times of tension, a habit that chess watchers said demonstrated his lack of will. That he has experimented with alcohol, yoga, sex and other recreational drugs is more in the tradition of a sixties' Flower Child than a new millennium's Chess champion. This was apparently done to combat insomniac tendencies and what he described as weird dreams. Kramnik first learnt to play chess with his father, in the small Rusian Black Sea town of Tuapse. His father was a sculptor and artist while his mother taught music. In no time at all he could defeat every member of his family in chess. A young Kramnik was spotted by Mikhail Botvinnik, the Soviet chess patriarch who had also guided Kasparov's career. When he was only 11 he gained his first master norm, at 14 he was second in the under-16 World Championships and he gained the title of Grandmaster in Guarapava Brazil in 1991. There were enough indications by this time that he was a potential world champion. And, Kasparov, who had already taken him under his wings and tutoring him, thought the same. For a man who has been less than charitable to most of his opponents, Kasparov was always generous in applauding the rising Russian star. 'There are many players. But they don't play chess, they love the pieces. Kramnik plays chess,' he said way back in 1992. Even after losing in London last week, Kasparov ruefully admitted that Kramnik definitely played better than him. That the match was going to be an interesting one was evident in the spring of this year when Kasparov addressed a press conference in London, announcing his Braingames Network (BGN) World Championship match with Kramnik. Holding that he was playing for the title of the 'Best Chess Player in the World,' Kasparov said he was convinced that Kramnik was the rightful challenger. 'I'm sure in my soul,' he said. For Kramnik, the match with Kasparov was something that he had been dreaming of for several years. 'It was a dream of my whole life, since my childhood, to play such a match because I was growing up during the Karpov-Kasparov matches,'' he said in an interview before the match. 'I am very, very excited.' Kramnik wasn't just excited about the match, he seemed fairly confident, too. 'I think I have a good chance. Kasparov and I have had very equal battles, and I think the match is going to be very close. I will prepare as never before and do everything I can to win...I have nothing to lose, and he has everything.' Prophetic, as it turned out.