- This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.
| Gata Kamsky | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Full name | Gataulla Rustemovich Kamsky |
| Country |  United States |
| Born | June 2, 1974 Novokuznetsk, Russia |
| Title | Grandmaster |
| FIDE rating | 2695 (No. 41 on the November 2009 FIDE ratings list) |
| Peak rating | 2745 (July 1996) |
Gata Kamsky (Tatar: Ğata Kamskiy, Ğataulla Rөstəm uğlı Sabirov; Гата Камский, Гатаулла Рөстәм улы Сабиров; Russian: Гатаулла Рустемович Сабиров, Гата Камский) (born June 2, 1974) is a Soviet-born American chess grandmaster. He is rated 2695 on the November 2009 FIDE list, ranking him 41st in the world and third among American players.
Kamsky was a prodigy who reached the final of the FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 at the age of 22, and reached a ranking of fourth in the world rankings in 1996.[1] He played almost no FIDE-rated games between 1997 and late 2004.
Kamsky won the Chess World Cup 2007. This earned him a match against Veselin Topalov for the right to challenge for the World Chess Championship 2010, which he lost.[2] Kamsky will also play in the Candidates Tournament to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2011.
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Early career
Kamsky was born in Novokuznetsk in Russia, in a Tatar family. Gata's last name, Kamsky, is derived from the stage nickname of his grandparents who were members of the Tatar traveling theater group.[citation needed] The family's "real" name is Sabirov.[citation needed]
He won the Soviet under-20 championship twice before 1989,[3][4] and at age 12, defeated veteran Grandmaster Mark Taimanov in a tournament game. He was possibly the then youngest person to defeat a grandmaster. He also earned his National Master title in that year. In 1989 he moved to the United States with his father Röstäm (also spelled Rustam).
In 1990, while aged 16 and still untitled, he played in the 64-player Interzonal tournament, the first step towards the World Chess Championship. He finished with 5.5 / 13.[5]
In 1990, FIDE awarded Kamsky the grandmaster title. In 1991, he won the U.S. Championship. Kamsky also did well at other prestigious chess tournaments, winning the Las Palmas tournament in 1994.
World Championship Candidate (1993-1996)
In 1993, the rival organisations FIDE and PCA each held Interzonal tournaments. Kamsky played in both, and in both cases qualified for the respective Candidates Tournaments. The Candidates tournaments were largely dominated by Kamsky and Viswanathan Anand.
In the first round of the 1994-95 FIDE Candidates matches, Kamsky beat Paul van der Sterren (+3=3−1). Kamsky's quarter-final match against Anand, held in July and August 1994 in Sanghi Nagar, India, was more dramatic. After draws in the first two games, Anand won the next two games to take an imposing 3–1 lead. Game 5 was drawn. Kamsky then scored 2.5–.5 in the remaining three games to tie the match 4–4 (+2=4−2), then won the two rapid chess playoff games to win the match. In the semi-final, held in Sanghi Nagar in February 1995, Kamsky routed Valery Salov 5.5–1.5 (+4=3−0).
In the 1994-95 PCA Candidates matches, Kamsky beat Vladimir Kramnik in the quarter-finals in New York in June, 1994. In September, 1994 Kamsky beat Nigel Short in the semi-finals in Linares, Spain. In the March 1995 final against Anand in Las Palmas, the FIDE result was reversed, with Kamsky losing (+1=7−3).
In the September 1994 match against Short, there was a highly publicized confrontation between Kamsky's father, Rustam Kamsky, and Short.[6][7]
In 1996, Kamsky played a 20-game match against Anatoly Karpov for the FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 title at Elista in Kalmykia, losing 7.5–10.5 (+3=9−6).
Inactivity (1996-2004)
After losing the match to Karpov, Kamsky gave up chess. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1999. Later he attended medical school for a year.[8] He then attended and graduated from law school at Touro Law Center in New York.
Kamsky's next rated games after his loss to Karpov were in 1999, when he returned to play in the FIDE Knockout World Championship event in Las Vegas, where he played a first-round, two-game match against the eventual tournament winner, Alexander Khalifman. Kamsky won the first game, lost the second game, and then lost the rapid play-off games.
Comeback (2004 onwards)
Kamsky did not play another game in public until June 15, 2004, when he participated in the 106th New York Masters,[9] playing four games in a day with a time control of 30 minutes for all his moves. His two wins and two draws were enough for him to tie for first place with four others. He subsequently played in several other editions of the weekly event with mixed success, before returning to regular chess in the 2005 U.S. Championship held in November-December 2004 where he scored a respectable but unspectacular 5.5-3.5. He was rated number 19 in the world on the April 2005 FIDE Elo rating list, at 2700. He retained this rating on the July 2005 list, but moved up to number 18, after a good unbeaten result at the 2005 HB Global Challenge tournament, held in Minneapolis in May, 2005. He has since returned to international chess, most notably finishing second behind Veselin Topalov at the M-Tel Masters event. Soon after, Kamsky led the US team to the bronze medal at the International Chess Olympiad at Turin. On July 4, 2006, he tied for first place with nine others at the World Open, winning about $7,000. A number of successes in 2007 marked his return to the playing level he had before his retirement, hinting at the possibility of becoming again a challenger for the very top of the world's chess hierarchy.
Kamsky played in the FIDE Chess World Cup 2005, and qualified for the Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship 2007, in May-June 2007. He won his first round match against Étienne Bacrot (+3-0=1), but was eliminated when he lost his second round match to Boris Gelfand +0-2=3.
In November-December 2007, Kamsky won the Chess World Cup 2007. In the final he defeated Alexei Shirov (+1-0=3). This earned him a match against Veselin Topalov in 2009, for the right to challenge for the World Chess Championship 2010. The match was held in Sofia, Bulgaria, in February 2009, and was won by Topalov 4.5 - 2.5.
As a finalist of the previous cycle, Kamsky has been given direct entry to the eight player Candidates Tournament to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship 2011.
Kamsky played board one for the United States in the 2008 Chess Olympiad, held in Dresden, Germany in November. The U.S. team captured the bronze medals.
Notable tournament victories
- Buffalo Open 1989
- Tilburg 1990
- Buenos Aires 1993
- Las Palmas 1994
- Dos Hermanas 1995
- New York 2006
- Philadelphia 2006
- Mashantucket 2007
- Khanty-Mansiysk 2007 World Cup
- Las Vegas 2008 Open
World championship matches and qualifiers
- PCA WCC Candidates Match 1995, Las Palmas, Kamsky-Anand (4.5-6.5)
- FIDE World Chess Championship 1996, Elista, Kamsky-Karpov (7.5-10.5)
- FIDE WCC Knockout 1999 Second Round, Las Vegas, Kamsky-Khalifman (1.5-2.5)
- FIDE WCC Candidates Match 2009, Sofia, Kamsky-Topalov (2.5-4.5)
Illustrative game
Here Kamsky, as Black, crushes future World Champion Kramnik en route to winning their 1994 Candidates match:
- Kramnik-Kamsky, World Championship Quarter-Finals Match, New York 1994
1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.g3 O-O 5.Bg2 c5 6.O-O Nc6 7.d4 cxd4 8.Nxd4 Qe7 9.Nc2 (White allows Black to ruin his pawn structure, and soon sacrifices one of his weak c-pawns. He hopes that his two bishops will give him sufficient compensation, but will find that he is unable to use them effectively.) Bxc3 10.bxc3 Rd8 11.Ba3 d6 12.Rb1 Qc7 13.Nd4 Nxd4 14.cxd4 Qxc4 15.Qd2 Qa6 16.Rb3 Rb8 17.e4 Bd7 18.Rf3 (trying to get play on the king-side, but Kamsky's pieces now overrun the queen-side) Ba4! (disdaining 18...Nxe4 19.Qf4 f5 20.g4 opening lines for White's pieces) 19.Re1 Rbc8 20.Bf1 Bb5 21.Bh3 Qa4 22.d5 Rc2 23.Qe3? exd5 (White is in deep trouble. If now 24.exd5? Re8 wins) 24.e5 d4! 25.Qg5 Re2! (Exploiting White's weak back rank. Now White sacrifices material for a fearsome-looking attack against g7, but Kamsky has calculated exactly.) 26.exf6 Rxe1+ 27.Bf1 (27.Kg2? Bf1+ 28.Kg1 Bxh3#) Rxf1+ 28.Kg2 Rg1+! 29.Kh3 (29.Kxg1? Qd1+ 30.Kg2 Qf1#) Bd7+ 30.Kh4 g6 31.Qh6 d3+ 32.Rf4 (32.Kg5? Qg4#) Qxf4+! 33.Qxf4 (33.gxf4 Rg4+ 34.Kh3 Rg5+! 35.Kh4 Rh5+ wins the queen) Rh1! 34.g4 h6! (Now White's attack is over and Black's pawns join in attacking White's king, threatening ...g5+.) 35.Kh3 (35.Qxh6? Rxh2+) g5! 36.Qd4 Rg1 37.f3 d2! 38.Qxd2 (38.Qxg1 Ba4 and Black queens) Bb5! 0-1 (39...Bf1+ will win White's queen)
References
- ^ FIDE Rankings 1970-1997
- ^ "World Chess Challenge Sofia 2009 - Veselin Topalov vs Gata Kamsky". http://www.wccc2009.com. World Chess Challenge 2009
- ^ "36th USSR Junior Chess Championship, Kapsukas, January 5-18, 1987". RusBase. http://al20102007.narod.ru/ch_urs/1987/ch_jun87.html. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
- ^ "37th USSR Junior Chess Championship, Ivano-Frankovsk, January 5-18, 1988". http://al20102007.narod.ru/ch_urs/1988/ch_jun88.html. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
- ^ 1990 Interzonal, Mark Weeks' Chess Pages
- ^ PCA Candidates Report, The Week in Chess, Issue 3, 1 Oct 1994
- ^ Kamsky-Short, 1994/2006, The Daily Dirt Chess Blog, Mig Greengard, 10 Oct 2006. Includes a posted response by Gata Kamsky
- ^ Dylan Loeb McClain, A Chess Master Returns Older, and Maybe Wiser A Chess Master Returns Older, and Maybe Wiser, New York Times, January 27, 2008 [1].
- ^ [2] 106th New York Masters Crosstable
External links
- Gata Kamsky International Chess & Sports Foundation, Kamsky's official website.
- FIDE rating card for Gata Kamsky
- Gata Kamsky player profile at ChessGames.com
- Gata Kamsky at 365Chess.com
- OlimpBase
- Kamsky biography at chessdom.com
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Lev Alburt |
United States Chess Champion 1991 |
Succeeded by Patrick Wolff |
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