Gata Kamsky (Tatar:Ğataulla Kamski) (born June 2, 1974) is an American chess grandmaster. At one point he was the third highest rated player in the world, but played no FIDE-rated games between 1999 and late 2004.
Kamsky was born in Tatarstan, Russia. He won the Soviet Under-20 championship twice before 1989. In 1989 he moved to the United States with his father Röstäm. His father has been described by some chess players as blustery.
In 1990 Kamsky became a chess grandmaster. In 1991 he won the US Championship. He also did well at prestigious chess tournaments. He placed second at the SKA Biel Interzonal in 1993. He won the Las Palmas tournament in 1994.
In 1996 Kamsky played in the World Chess Championship at Elista in Kalmykia. He lost the 20-game match to Anatoly Karpov with a score of to 7.5 to Karpov´s 12.5 (Karpov had mathematically won the match after the 18th game, so play was halted). After losing this match he announced he was giving up chess and going to study medicine.
Kamsky did not play any rated games after that except in 1999, when he returned to play in the World Championship. He played a two game match against Alexander Khalifman in Las Vegas. Kamsky won the first game, lost the second game, and then lost the play-off game.
He did not play another game in public until June 15, 2004, when he participated in the 106th New York Masters, playing four games in a day with a time control of 30 minutes for all his moves. His two wins and two draws were enough for him to be one of five players tied for first place. He subsequently played in several other editions of the weekly event with mixed success, before returning to slow chess in the 2005 US Championship held in November-December 2004 where he scored a respectable but unspectacular 5.5/9. His subsequent return to the April 2005 FIDE Elo rating list saw him at number nineteen in the world, with a rating of 2700.
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