Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Gata Kamsky wins the 2007 Chess World Cup!!!
Gata, Gata, Gata! That’s what the crowd was chanting in Siberia.. or not.. As you can see from the picture, chess is not the most popular game in the world, especially when the tournament is held in the middle of nowhere.
Kamsky’s World Cup victory is especially impressive given the fact he had no real opening preparation the entire tournament. The openings he played got him playable middlegame positions, where he was able to outplay his opponent. If he can get his openings together and start getting an advantage with white every once in awhile, he’ll be really tough to deal with (not that he isn’t tough already!).
So Kamsky’s next challenge will be Veselin Topalov. The winner of this match will face the winner of the Kramnik-Anand match for the World Championship. You have to figure Topalov has an advantage in a match against Kamsky, even though Kamsky looked so impressive this tournament. In my opinion, Kamsky has a clearer positional understanding than Topalov, but against Topalov I don’t think he can get away with getting nothing out of the opening with white. If Kamsky wants to win this match, he’s gonna have to start playing some more testing stuff with the white pieces.
The youngsters Carlsen and Karjakin should both be pretty happy with their semi-final finishes. Next time around they will be more experienced and a little more mature so you should expect one of these kids to eventually breakthrough to a world championship match. It was a shame youngster Hikaru Nakamura didn’t make it into the cycle, his style of play is perfect for the way this tournament was structured. Instead some of the weaker GMs from the USA made it in, and most of them got knocked out in round 1.
Now that Kamsky has won the World Cup, it will be interesting to see whether he decides to play some of the big US swiss tournaments next year. Strong GMs have commented that the large swiss tournaments build bad habits, but one has to wonder if Kamsky would be the fighter he is today without playing some of these large swiss tournaments.
Congratulations to Kamsky on his win! It’s nice to see an American talent doing so well.
The match between Kamsky and Topalov will be interesting. While Topalov would have to be considered the favorite, I happen to think Topalov’s risk-taking style will tend to offset the disadvantages of what has been described as the safe but terribly enterprising openings that Kamsky has been playing lately. Kamsky will be the bull-rider, trying to hang on, while Topalov will be the bull.
In fact, one could argue that, of the three competitors Kamsky might face in the quartet of four, Topalov might be the one he’d choose. Kamsky seemed to do well against Shirov, a player known for aggression and creative play.
Having said that, Topalov is still Topalov, and I would be making a big mistake should I fail to give him his due. There will likely be games where Kamsky gets blown off the board and games where Kamsky grinds out advantages after Topalov goes astray. In the end, while Kamsky would do well to manage a few home-cooked lines with white to give Topalov something to worry about, I suspect the Kamsky-Topalov match will have more to do with how well Topalov is playing than how well Kamsky manages to prepare for it.
Posted by: John Elmore at December 17th, 2007 at 9:04 am