As the world’s greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov employed his formidable intellect to outwit rivals before seizing on a weakness to crush them.

The Russian grandmaster is now applying those skills to a new game of strategy aimed at defeating his toughest opponent of all — President Putin. At stake, he argues, is the fate of Russian democracy.

Mr Kasparov has devoted himself to politics since retiring from professional chess last year. He regards Mr Putin as a dictator whose authoritarian rule threatens to return Russia to a dark past.

Mr Kasparov, 43, is the most prominent name in The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups formed in an attempt to break Mr Putin’s grip on the Kremlin at the presidential elections in March 2008. The gambit begins today when The Other Russia attempts to demonstrate in Moscow under the banner of the March of Dissenters. The authorities have banned the march and warned the organisers of criminal charges against anyone taking part.

In an interview with The Times Mr Kasparov compared Mr Putin’s Russia to Pinochet’s Chile and the Communist regimes swept away by the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe.

“We are not fighting to win elections in Russia, we are fighting to have elections,” he said. “The word ‘election’ should be removed from our political vocabulary now. It is an appointment process.”

He will not be a contender for the presidency but The Other Russia aims to create the conditions under which an anti-Putin candidate can win. It appears, however, to be an uneven contest against a man who enjoys 80 per cent approval ratings.

Most Russians want Mr Putin to overturn a constitutional bar on a third term in office. Many will back whomever Mr Putin endorses to succeed him.The President appears supremely confident, surrounded in the Kremlin by the siloviki (the power elite), a hand-picked group of former KGB comrades who dominate Russia’s political elite.

The chess master, however, sees cracks in the Kremlin wall and believes that Mr Putin will give him an opening for a counter-attack. Mr Kasparov argues that, despite the oil riches, the vast majority of Russians are increasingly enduring economic hardship that will burst to the surface politically next year.

“I don’t think we are seeing a super-confident Kremlin. It is not one Kremlin any more, the ruling elite is split into many different voices,” he said.

“If the temperature is rising, we will see the collapse of the Kremlin power structure. Putin has to make his move and name a successor, but this is a man who has never made a painful choice in his life.

“Other groups may be extremely upset and this inability to organise a transition of power will create a crisis. That’s our chance.

“If we can keep The Other Russia united for the next six months there will be more and more losers in the Kremlin battle who are looking for other options. The momentum will be on our side. It gives me some optimism, although not much because it could go either way. There could be repressions and arrests.”