Kamsky, a fighter for all seasons

Gata Kamsky is a Soviet-born American chess grandmaster (he was born in Siberia on June 2, 1974). He won the Soviet Under-20 Championship twice before immigrating to America in 1989 with his father Rustam. He was awarded the Grandmaster title after his victory in the 1990 Tilburg Interpolis tournament (Netherlands). In 1991, Gata played and won his first U.S. Championship. He also did well at other prestigious chess tournaments, placing second at the SKA Biel Interzonal in 1993, and winning the Las Palmas tournament in 1994. For a time in the early 1990s he was widely regarded as Judit Polgár's main rival as the most promising chess prodigy.
He soon became the highest-rated American player since Bobby Fischer: he became a fixture of the top ten and the supertournament circuit and at one point he was the third highest-rated player in the world. Like Fischer Gata played in a Fide world championship match, but he lost to Karpov in 1996. Like Fischer Kamsky then disappeared from chess, but to go back to school. 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 two-game match against Alexander Khalifman. Kamsky won the first game, lost the second game, and then lost the rapid play-off games. Kamsky did not play another game in public until June 15, 2004, when he participated in the 106th New York Masters.
Now he is almost 33, married, and he is rated 2705 in the April 2007 Fide list, ranking him nineteenth in the world. Gata is not the same player (and man) he was eleven years ago, but he is still a tough opponent for everyone. Last week he won the 2007 Foxwoods open (official site: http://members.cox.net/tournaments/foxwoods/): he and Izoria were 1st and 2nd on tiebreaks, then Kamsky won a 29 move blitz game as black. A really good result in view of his next appointments: the Mtel Masters in Sofia and the Fide Candidates matches in Elista.
Today the seventh round of the 2007 European championship was played in Dresden, Germany. Ukrainian GM Andrei Volokitin is now the sole leader in the open section with 6 points: he crushed Russian GM Sergey Volkov in only 28 moves in today's game. In the women's section IM Tatiana Kosintseva (in the picture), who will turn 21 next Wednesday, has won all seven games to lead the field by a point and a half. She is followed by her sister Nadezhda and Bulgarian GM Antoaneta Stefanova amongst the others. Official site: http://www.dresden2008.de. Results and games on my Italian site, too: www.messaggeroscacchi.it.
Here is a nice game from Euro champ, a win by Slovenian GM Dusko Pavasovic against Dutch superGM Loek Van Wely.

Van Wely,L (2674)-Pavasovic,D (2567) [D31], Dresden 9.4.2007
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c6 4. e4 dxe4 5. Nxe4 Bb4+ 6. Bd2 Qxd4 7. Bxb4 Qxe4+ 8. Be2 Na6 9. Bd6 Qxg2 10. Qd2 Nf6 11. Bf3 Qg6 12. O-O-O e5 13. Ne2 Bg4 14. Rhg1 O-O-O 15. Qe3 h5 16. h3 Rxd6! 17. Rxd6 Nb4 18. Qb3 Qh6+ 19. Kd1 Bxf3 20. Qxf3 Qh7 21. Nc3 Qc2+ 22. Ke1 e4 23. Qf5+ Kb8 24. Rxg7 Nd3+ 25. Kf1 Qc1+ 26. Kg2 Nf4+ 27. Kg3 Qg1+ 28. Kxf4 Qxf2+ 29. Kg5??
The losing move. After 29.Ke5 Qc5+ 30.Kf4 Qd6+ 31.Qe5 Qxe5+ 32.Kxe5 Nd7+ 33.Kxe4 Re8+ 34.Kd4 White would have had some drawing chances.
29... Qg3+ 30. Kxf6 Qxd6+ 31. Kg5 Qh6+ 0-1