FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2, 1999
Press Release #6
YOUNG AMERICAN FIGHTS HIS WAY INTO ROUND 2 OF THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP
As older and more experienced chess grandmasters fell by the wayside, young Tal Shaked of Arizona upset Vlastimil Babula of the Czech Republic in a tense tiebreak match to reach Round 2 of the World Chess Championship.
Shaked is the number 91 seed out of 100 players. Babula was the number 55 seed.
The month-long World Chess Championship, with a $3 million prize fund, is being held in luxurious Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. The seven-round event is sponsored by the World Chess Federation, known as FIDE. The knockout format is similar to tennis tournaments, with the field shrinking each round until two players meet in the Final to decide the world title.
Nine American chess grandmasters were invited to Las Vegas. As expected, the competition has been fierce. Besides Tal Shaked, only two Americans survived Round 1: Boris Gulko and Alex Yermolinsky (called "The Yerminator"), both former U.S. champions. Current U.S. Champion Nick deFirmian was eliminated. So were Dimitry Gurevich, Sergey Kudrin, and former U.S. champions Joel Benjamin and Alexander Ivanov. Gurevich and Benjamin made it to the tiebreak stage before losing. They both fought gamely: Gurevich battled through six tiebreak games before falling, and Benjamin fought for five games.
Perhaps the best U.S. hope is Gata Kamsky, who is seeded straight into Round 2 because of his high rating. Kamsky actually made it to the Final of the World Championship in 1996 before losing to Anatoly Karpov, the most successful tournament player of all time. These days Kamsky is an unknown quantity, because he is a medical student in New York and has not played in recent years.
The exciting chess games in Las Vegas are being broadcast live on the Internet. Chess fans around the world are following the moves at the U.S. Chess Federation Web site, uschess.org.
CONTACT: Timothy Hanke, Press Officer for the World Chess Championship, at 702-697-5800. Or call Caesars Palace at 702-731-7110, and ask for extensions 5913 through 5927.