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Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
 How nice it is to see the American Grandmaster and former world title contender Gata Kamsky among the Grand Prix participants, despite the fact that he already earned himself a place in the current World Championship cycle: in November 2008, a match between Kamsky and Veselin Topalov is scheduled, of which the winner will have the right to challenge the World Champion (the winner of the October Anand-Kramnik match) in 2009.
Former world's number three Gata Kamsky was born June 2, 1974 in Novokuznetsk, Soviet-Union. He won the Soviet under-20 championship twice before 1989, the year he moved to the United States with his father Rustam. In 1990, FIDE awarded Kamsky the Grandmaster title and one year later he won the U.S. Championship.
In 1994-95 Kamsky was very successful in both the PCA and the FIDE Candidates Matches. In the PCA Candidates matches he beat Vladimir Kramnik in the quarter-finals and Nigel Short in the semi-finals. He lost the final to Anand.
In the FIDE Candidates matches, Kamsky beat Paul van der Sterren, Viswanathan Anand and Valery Salov. With this, he qualified for the final against Anatoly Karpov, a 20-game match for the FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 title held in Elista, Kalmykia. Kamsky lost 7.5-10.5.
After this match, Kamsky gave up chess in order to study medicine, and later changed to law. He shortly returned to the chess scene in 1999, when he played the FIDE Knockout World Championship in Las Vegas. He drew his first minimatch with Alexander Khalifman but was eliminated in the rapid play-off.
Kamsky's real comeback started in 2004, when he tied for first place at the New York Masters. Gradually, he started playing more and more tournaments, and started showing his world class again at the 2005 FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, where he finished 9th.
Another excellent result was Kamsky's second place behind Veselin Topalov at the Mtel Masters 2006 in Sofia, finishing before Viswanathan Anand, Peter Svidler, Ruslan Ponomariov and Etienne Bacrot.
Immediately after that tournament, Kamsky led the US team to the bronze medal at the Chess Olympiad in Turin, May 2006. A few months later he tied for first place with nine others at the World Open in Philadelphia.
In May-June last year, Kamsky won his first Candidates match against Etienne Bacrot but lost his second match to Boris Gelfand.
In December 2007, Kamsky became the glorious winner of the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, beating Magnus Carlsen in the semi-final and then Alexei Shirov in the final. By this he earned the right to challenge Veselin Topalov for a match, which is scheduled for November 2008.
Kamsky lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son. In his "second career", he's enjoying chess a lot, and hasn't lost the ambition to become World Champion. Some colleagues think he still has to cath up a bit as far as his openings are concerned, but so far, Kamsky's fighting spirit has proved more than enough compensation.
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