Gata Kamsky

Kamsky at the 2008 Chess Olympiad in Dresden
Association	Soviet Union (until 1989) United States (since 1990)
Born	June 2, 1974 Novokuznetsk , Russia
title	Grandmaster (1990)
Current  Elo rating	2674 (August 2020)
Best Elo rating	2763 (July 2013)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Gata Kamsky ( Russian Гата Рустемович Камский , former German transcription Gata Rustemowitsch Kamski , Tatar Гата Камский; born June 2, 1974 in Novokuznetsk ) is an American chess grandmaster with Tatar - Russian roots.

Career

Early career

Kamsky is the son of a Tatar father and a Russian mother. After his parents' divorce, the son came into the care of his father, who settled with him in Leningrad . At the age of eight, Kamsky learned to play chess. He showed astonishing talents at an early age, so he was already placed in the third grade at the age of six and at this age he played the piano very promisingly .

At the age of twelve he won the championship of the Dynamo chess club , in which two grandmasters also took part. In 1987 (at the age of twelve) he won the U18 USSR Youth Championship. In 1989 he emigrated to the USA with his father on the occasion of an open tournament in New York . The Cold War was still going on, and so the Western mass media reported extensively on the decision of Father Rustam and son Gata, announced at a press conference. In July 1990 he had an Elo rating of 2650 and was ranked 8th in the world, which makes him the highest rated player without a grandmaster title to date.

Kamsky's chess talent came in the early 1990s to advantage: in 1990, after the traditional tournament of Tilburg had won that gave him FIDE the Grandmaster title . In 1991 he became US Champion in Los Angeles . He qualified via the Interzonal 1993 by Biel for the candidates fighting FIDE. In the same year he also qualified for the candidate fights of the PCA in Groningen . In the FIDE World Championship cycle, he reached the final, which was first considered a FIDE World Championship fight. He was defeated by Anatoli Karpov in Elista 1996 with 7.5: 10.5 (+3 = 9 −6). In the PCA World Championship tournament he was defeated in the candidate final in Las Palmas in 1996 to Viswanathan Anand , whom he had defeated in the semifinals of the FIDE World Championship cycle, with 4.5: 6.5 (+1 = 7-3).

Withdrawal from professional chess

After these successes, Kamsky ended his chess playing career and began studying law in Brooklyn . In his free time he played a large number of games at the ICC , which the chess community perceived with interest. Surprisingly, he took part in the FIDE World Championship in Las Vegas in 1999 , but was defeated in the 2nd round by the eventual winner Alexander Chalifman 1.5: 2: 5.

comeback

In November 2004, Kamsky announced his resignation and took part in the US Championship in San Diego , where he ended up in midfield. 2005 Kamsky was at 500,000 US dollars doped and extremely strong field open from Minneapolis shared second place. In December he won the Chess World Cup 2005 9th place and thus qualified for the candidates fighting for the World Cup 2007 . In 2006 he won the World Open in Philadelphia after a playoff . In the same year he was second after Wesselin Topalow at the renowned M-Tel Masters in Sofia , also shared second in the following year. In the 2007 candidate fights in Elista, Kamsky first defeated Étienne Bacrot with a clear 3.5: 0.5, then lost to Boris Gelfand in the second round with 1.5: 3.5. At the end of 2007 Kamsky celebrated his greatest sporting success since his return to chess: In Khanty-Mansiysk he won the 2007 World Cup by beating Alexei Shirov (2.5: 1.5) in the final (in the previous rounds he defeated, among others, Pyotr Swidler , Ruslan Ponomarjow and Magnus Carlsen ) and qualified for the candidate final in February 2009 against Wesselin Topalow, in which the challenger of the world champion for the 2010 World Cup was determined. He lost this match, which took place in Sofia from February 17 to 26, 2009, with a score of 2.5: 4.5 (+1 = 3 −3). In 2009 , 2011 and 2013 Kamsky also took part in the World Chess Cup .

After being in the Chess Olympiad 1992 in Manila for the US for the first time at a Chess Olympiad participated, he paused 14 years old and first played in 2006 in Turin and in the Chess Olympiad 2008 in Dresden each on top board for the US and contributed with his score of 6.5 points from ten games to the bronze medal 2008 of his team. As in 2006, when his team also achieved third place in the overall ranking. At the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk , he scored 7 points from eleven games, where he played on the second board, as well as at the 2012 and 2014 Chess Olympiads . Kamsky also competed with the United States team in the 1993 World Team Championships (which he won), 2011 and 2013.

In May 2010, he won the US Championship in St. Louis after a playoff against Yury Shulman . In August 2010 he won the Grenke World Championship in rapid chess in Mainz . In April 2011 he won again at the US championship. When Candidates Tournament 2011 in Kazan he turned off in the first round Vesselin Topalov, but lost in the second round after the tiebreak against Boris Gelfand. In May 2013, Kamsky won the US championship for the fourth time, after a playoff against Alejandro Ramírez . In 2014 he won his fifth title as national champion, this time after a playoff against Varuzhan Akobian .

Elo development

Elo development

societies

In the United States Chess League , Kamsky played for the New York Knights in 2014 , and he won the Russian team championship in 2008 with Ural Yekaterinburg . Kamsky won the European Club Cup three times (in which he participated a total of seven times), namely in 2007 with CA Linex Magic Mérida , in 2008 with Ural Yekaterinburg and in 2012 (when he also achieved the best individual result on the fifth board) with SOCAR Baku . In Germany, Kamsky was registered for the SF Dortmund-Brackel in the 1st Bundesliga in the 1993/94 season , but remained unused. In the 2016/17 season he played for SF Deizisau in the 2nd Bundesliga , and in the 2018/19 season also for Deizisau in the 1st Bundesliga.

family

Kamsky is married and has one son.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Results of the FIDE World Cup 1999 on mark-weeks.com (English)
2. ↑ Gata Kamsky's results at the Chess Olympiads on Olimpbase (English)
3. ↑ Gata Kamsky's results at the World Team Championships on Olimpbase (English)
4. ↑ Numbers according to FIDE Elo lists. Data sources: fide.com (period since 2001), olimpbase.org (period 1971 to 2001)
5. ↑ Gata Kamsky's results at the European Club Cup on olimpbase.org (English)

Web links

Commons : Gata Kamsky  - Collection of Images

• Literature by and about Gata Kamsky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gata Kamsky at the World Chess Federation FIDE (English)
• Replayable chess games by Gata Kamsky on 365Chess.com (English)