Kamsky wins World Cup 2007 (update)

Article updatet with photos and videos Today, after 23 days of the World Cup, it's now all decided: Gata Kamsky has just drawn the last game of the final against Alexei Shirov and thus he won the match 2.5-1.5. The player from Brooklyn, New York, who emigrated to the US a long time ago and who, after a long break in his chess career, fought himself back into the absolute world elite, and has now won the Cup, 120.000 USD and the right to challenge Veselin Topalov. Truly a wonderful result by the man who was in fantastic shape throughout the whole tournament. Shirov, who can also look back at a really great tournament, goes home with 80,000 USD, a bunch of rating points (just like Kamsky) and probably the desire to go on a long vacation now. The fans favoured him, but again, Ca?ɬØssa didn't grant him a match.

In the first three rounds, Kamsky beat Ahmed Adly, Boris Avrukh and Kiril Georgiev, all with the score 1.5-0.5. Then he drew his mini-match against Peter Svidler, to beat the Russian 1.5-0.5 in the rapids. In the quarterfinals Ponomariov was Kamsky's victim, and the semifinals it was the end for Carlsen, both losing 1.5-0,5 against Kamsky. Shirov went down 2,5-1,5 in the four-game final, and so Kamsky didn't lose once in his sixteen regular and two rapid games!

Here's game 4 with annotations (this afternoon's live coverage):



Here's the complete schedule as from round 3: Click for bigger version:



The very last game of the World Cup

A (pretty lonely) spectator's point a view

The actual World Cup...

...and here in close-up

Photos: Eugene Atarov

The tournament also produced videos. So far these were published:

ROUND 1 [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"484","attributes":{"class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","height":"355","width":"425","style":""}}]]

ROUND 2

ROUND 3

ROUND 4

ROUND 5

ROUND 6