2012 U.S. Championship Player Bios

Gata Kamsky defected to the United States in 1989 after a trip to the New York Open that year. Lev Alburt, who helped Gata defect, soon got a call from the Russian Grandmaster Genna Sosonko: "You got yourself a new World Champion!" Kamsky's potential to earn the ultimate crown nearly became actualized when he beat Kramnik in a match, qualifying him to play Karpov for the World Championship title. He was the first American since Fischer to go that far, and although he lost the match, he was still number three in the World. He then made a shocking announcement. Gata was leaving chess, to become a doctor--where he could earn more money.
 
For five years Gata lived up to his promise and did not play a rated game. He earned an undergrad pre-med degree in chemistry, but then changed his mind and applied to law school. After graduating, Kamsky realized how much he missed chess. Egged on by friends and fans, he decided to give chess another try. "Now I feel much less pressure. I play for myself only."
 
"I could make more money as an attorney," said Gata, "I came back to chess to try to win the World Championship." Kamsky does not regret his hiatus. "I learned so much about life in those six years," he said. "Before, I knew so little about how the world works." His career restarted with a surprise appearance at the New York Masters. Thereafter, Gata revealed that he was preparing for top-flight competitive play. He had solid but unremarkable performances in his first few outings, and the first hint that Kamsky was really back was at the 2005 World Cup. He defeated one elite player after another (including former World Champion Alexander Khalifman), earning a spot in the next World Championship cycle. He had another astonishing performance in a super-grandmaster tournament in Sofia, May 2006, when he defeated Vishy Anand with the black pieces, and placed second in a star-studded field that included World Champion Veselin Topalov.
 
In late 2007, Gata Kamsky made a serious step toward his primary goal. He won the World Cup (Khanty-Mansiysk, Nov.24-Dec.17), defeating Peter Svidler, Ruslan Ponomariov and Magnus Carlsen along the way to the final, where he faced Alexei Shirov. He defeated Alexei Shirov 2.5-1.5. Kamsky lost to Topalov in the 2008 match in Sofia, Bulgaria, but last May, he got his revenge by upsetting Topalov in a Candidates Match. He eventually lost to GM Boris Gelfand in the semi-finals. A very solid player and determined fighter, Gata does not lose too often, but he doesn't have the wild streak of a Nakamura or Shabalov that is particularly suited to rolling through American Swisses. Since his comeback, he's played a variety of openings. Most frequently played are the Kan Sicilian, the Slav, the black side of the Ruy and 1.e4.

Yasser Seirawan was born in Damascus, Syria. His father was Arab and his mother an English nurse from Nottingham, where he spent some time in his early childhood. When he was seven, his family emigrated to Seattle, where he attended McClure Middle School and Garfield High School, and honed his game at a (now-defunct) coffeehouse, the Last Exit on Brooklyn, playing against the likes of Latvian-born master Viktors Pupols and six-time Washington State Champion James Harley McCormick.

He is married to FIDE Master Yvette Nagel.

Seirawan began playing chess at 12; at 13 he became Washington junior champion. At 19 he won the World Junior Chess Championship. He also won a game against Viktor Korchnoi, who then invited Seirawan to Switzerland, where Korchnoi was training for his world title match against Anatoly Karpov.

For many years he was the chief editor of Inside Chess magazine, which however later became an Internet-only magazine and later just a column at the ChessCafe.com website.

In 1999, Seirawan played a ten-game match against Michael Adams in Bermuda. The match was drawn +2-2=6.

In 2001, Seirawan released a plan to reunite the chess world, which at that time had two world champions: Ruslan Ponomariov had gained the title under the auspices of FIDE, while Vladimir Kramnik had beaten Garry Kasparov to take the Einstein title. It called for one match between Ponomariov and Kasparov (the world number one), and another between Kramnik and the winner of the 2002 Einstein tournament in Dortmund (who turned out to be Peter Leko). The winners of these matches would then play each other to become undisputed World Champion. This plan was signed by all parties on May 6, 2002, in the so-called "Prague Agreement". The Kramnik-Leko match took place (the match was drawn, with Kramnik retaining his title); the Kasparov-Ponomariov match was canceled in 2003, and this particular plan became moot after the September-October 2006 FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 between Kramnik and Veselin Topalov reunited the world championship title .

Following a series of events Seirawan participated in China during September 2003, there were reports that he would be retiring as a professional player. In the July 2007 FIDE list, Seirawan had an Elo rating of 2634, placing him in the top 100 chess players in the world, and America's number four (behind Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky and Alexander Onischuk). He played six games in the July 2007 FIDE update.

In 2007 Yasser Seirawan unveiled his enhanced chess game called Seirawan chess which he is currently promoting worldwide. The first ever event was a 12 board simultaneous exhibition held March 31, 2007 in Vancouver, Canada.

Yasser Seirawan has written several books.

The popular "Winning Chess" series (with co-author IM Jeremy Silman):

• Play Winning Chess - Introduction to chess and some basic strategies
• Winning Chess Tactics - Introduction to tactics with puzzles
• Winning Chess Strategies - How to use small advantages and use strategies to gain them
• Winning Chess Openings - Brief descriptions of the most popular openings, and opening strategies
• Winning Chess Endings - Introduction to the endgame
• Winning Chess Brilliancies - Notable games analyzed by the author
• Winning Chess Combinations - How to recognize the main combination patterns; somewhat of a follow up to Winning Chess Tactics

The "Winning Chess" series was originally published by Microsoft Press; it is now published by Everyman Chess.

Chess on the Edge (with Bruce Harper) - collected games of Grandmaster Duncan Suttles, published by Chess'n Math Association in March 2008.

Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions, 2010, Everyman Chess, 978-1857445879

Source: Yasser Seirawan, in Wikipedia, retrieved March 23, 2011.

The weather was so harsh in the years that Armenian-American Grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian spent in Mongolia, that his father forbade "Var" and his sister Armine, from playing outside. He taught them chess, a perfect indoor distraction. "From the very beginning" Var says, "I was different from other chess kids. It was never just a game for me. I always wanted to be a Grandmaster, and knew that I would do what it takes." As a teenager living in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, Varuzhan spent all day playing chess and soccer. His teachers agreed that he could focus on chess, without fear of truancy charges. "This is one way in which Armenia is very different from the United States. If I went to high school here, I never could have spent so much energy on chess."

Varuzhan Akobian qualified to play his first rated tournament, the Armenian Junior Chess Championship in 1992, earning third place in the under 10 section, then went on to take first place the following year. He participated in his first World Chess Championship in Czechoslovakia at the age of 9 and placed eighth.

Varuzhan excels in positional battles and admires the games and style of Armenian hero, World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Var's favorite Black opening, just like Petrosian, is the French Defense. Var's advice to players aspiring to improve is this: "Don't expect to see constant improvement. You build knowledge and work hard, and after a while, you'll see a big breakthrough."

In 2002, Varuzhan won the Samford Chess Fellowship, which allows a talented junior to focus on chess for two years. The prize paid off quickly, as he tied for first in the 2002 World Open and also won the Irme Koenig GM Invitational. The following year, Akobian scored 8/9 to win the 2003 U.S. Junior Closed Championship, winning his first seven games. He was officially awarded the Grandmaster title in June 2004, after which he won the World Open again, clinching it with a sparkling win against Alexander Shabalov. Varuzhan is the first person in the 21st century to win clear first in the World Open (without having to play a blitz playoff).

Recently, GM Akobian moved from sunny California to Topeka, Kansas, where his wife is attending law school at Washburn University. He has joined the Resident GM rotation at the Chess Club and Schoalstic Center of Saint Louis, which brings some of the country's top players to the Chess Club to give private lessons, present lectures and share their chess knowledge witht the club's more than 900 members.

Gregory Kaidanov's first major win came in a Moscow tournament in 1987, and he was awarded the Grandmaster title a year later. Kaidanov moved to the U.S. in 1991. He's racked up a number of tournament championships. Kaidanov was a member of the silver Olympiad team in Russia in 1998, won a silver board medal at the Calvia, Spain Olympiad in 2004 and was a member of the bronze medal Olympiad team in 2006. Kaidanov is one of America's premiere chess coaches. In 2008, he coached the U.S. team to a bronze medal finish at the Women's Olympiad.

Gregory emigrated from Ukraine to the U.S. in 1991, with his three children and wife, to Lexington, Kentucky. Lexington is hardly the epicenter of American chess. How did Kaidanov end up there?

Gregory's first day in America was on a visit in the summer of 1990, in the pre-Guiliani New York, when the city was notorious for a high crime rate. He and his wife were robbed twice in one day! In addition to his savings, he lost 10 years worth of chess analysis. He was devastated. Fortunately, he did not follow his first instinct to give up on the U.S.A. His friend GM Dmitry Gurevich invited him to Chicago, after which Dmitry helped connect Kaidanov with chess organizer Ken Troutman. Troutman organized a series of chess exhibitions for Gregory in Lexington, and sponsored his U.S visa. Rattled from his first traumatic days in New York, he was particularly impressed by the safety in Kentucky.

He barely unpacked his unstolen bags, when he began steam-rolling the U.S Open chess circuit. He won the 1992 World Open in Philly and the 1992 U.S Open. Greg's great first year performances helped develop the "honeymoon theory", that Grandmaster emigrates fare fantastically during their first year in the U.S.A. A decade after his streak, he started an equally amazing one. It began at the 2002 Aeroflot Open in Moscow, sponsored by the eponymous Russian airline. Kaidanov prevailed over 82 (!) other GMs in one of the strongest fields ever assembled.

Kaidanov was born in Ukraine, where his dad taught him the rules of chess at six years old. According to Greg, it's a common American myth that chess was a part of the daily Soviet school curriculum. Still, he's nostalgic for his childhood chess days, where he played after school for hours on end. Gregory was not a teenaged prodigy. His success came after two decades of solid hard work. His first major tournament win came in Moscow 1987, where he crushed Indian star Vishy Anand. He earned the IM title that same year, and was awarded the GM title just a year later in 1988.

Kaidanov is also the most active Grandmaster teacher in America. He travels from Louisiana to California, coaching, giving lectures and conducting simultaneous exhibitions. He is the head coach of the www.uschessschool.com founded in 2006 by IM Greg Shahade. Several times a year, players from all over the country meet up for a one-week intensive training session in Kaidanov's current hometown, Lexington.

After a quick bowl of Raisin brain, Gregory often works on chess alone, or with a student, for 12 hours straight. The ability to study and coach chess for such long hours come from a deep love for the game, and for sharing. “I would never give up coaching, even if the money meant nothing to me." His students range from serious amateurs of all ages to Maurice Ashley, who Kaidanov helped become the first ever African American GM. Kaidanov had a great success in the 2008 Women's Olympiad, where he coached the U.S. team to a bronze medal finish. He is also a frequent coach at the U.S. Chess School.

Despite Kaidanov's many tournament wins and high ranking among U.S players, he has never won a U.S Championship. Students all over the country are rooting for Greg to take his place among the gallery of U.S Champions.