The New York Times-20080127-A Chess Master Returns Older- and Maybe Wiser

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A Chess Master Returns Older, and Maybe Wiser

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Even in a chess world accustomed to odd characters like Bobby Fischer, the Brooklynite who became world champion and then an unstable recluse, Gata Kamsky has always been an object of curiosity.

When Mr. Kamsky defected from the Soviet Union in 1989 at age 14, he was already an accomplished player. He was shepherded by his Svengali-like father, Rustam, who often berated his son and anyone he believed was standing in the way of his becoming the greatest player in the world.

In 1996, at 22, Mr. Kamsky reached the pinnacle of the game, playing Anatoly Karpov for the championship of the World Chess Federation. He lost. Afterward, his father held a press conference to announce that his son was quitting chess to attend medical school.

And then he was gone.

Eight years later, in 2004, he reappeared as a full-time player. And now, at 33, Mr. Kamsky's comeback is very near complete.

Last month, Mr. Kamsky won an international chess competition that left him as one of four men vying to become the new world champion by 2009. If he wins, he would be the first American champion since Fischer in 1972.

That he has risen to the top of the chess world again after such a long layoff has many of the world's top players shaking their heads in wonderment.

It's never been done before, said John Fedorowicz, a New York grandmaster who helped train Mr. Kamsky in the early 1990s. The guy's playing unbelievably.

Just as surprising is that Mr. Kamsky's return to the top has been accomplished without the visible presence of his father.

Mr. Kamsky was born in Novokuznetsk, a remote city in south-central Russia. His father wanted him to be a pianist and had him practice for hours a day between the ages of 6 and 8.

His father moved them to St. Petersburg to find him teachers when he was 8 but, Mr. Kamsky said, they met resistance from bureaucrats who wanted him to start training at the beginning because he had had no formal music education.

So his father switched him to chess and instituted the same training regimen that he had used for piano.

When he came to the United States, Mr. Kamsky was a gangly kid with glasses who almost never smiled or spoke to anyone other than his father. Rustam made his son study chess 12 to 14 hours a day in their Brooklyn apartment, and cut him off from the outside world except for chess competitions.

His father said that he wanted Gata to become great at whatever he did. Everybody is the same in the brain, Rustam Kamsky said, adding Gata is a normal guy. But, he said, If you study together with your children helping them all the time, they can become great.

Allen Kaufman, the former head of the American Chess Foundation, which sponsored Mr. Kamsky and his father when they defected, said they were almost completely opposite personalities. Gata is intellectual, polite. Rustam was the opposite. Rustam was a battler, always jumping up and down and feeling they were being treated unfairly.

Mr. Kamsky said that he is still close to his father, who does not accompany him to chess tournaments because he is getting old and he has other things on his mind.

Both said that his decision to walk away from chess in 1996 was his, not his father's.

Echoing sentiments his father often expressed, Mr. Kamsky said, without elaborating, that he quit because there were people interested in preventing his rise to the top.

What is the point of trying if it is not in your control? he asked.

After he dropped out, Mr. Kamsky went to Brooklyn College, graduating in 1999. He flirted briefly with chess, playing in a world championship tournament in Las Vegas. But after losing his first match, I went back to my life, he said.

Instead of medical school, Mr. Kamsky said he went to Touro Law Center on Long Island. He graduated in 2004, but said he failed the bar exam because his son, now 3 1/2, had just been born and he was unable to study properly for the exam.

He has not taken it again. Instead, Mr. Kamsky, who lives in Brighton Beach, returned to chess, beginning with small tournaments at the Marshall Chess Club in Manhattan.

There were many factors in his decision, but the biggest one was time. Chess I can play competitively until I am 40, Mr. Kamsky said. Law you can practice until you are past 65.

His father said he urged his son to become a lawyer, but he said to me, 'No, this is very strange, I want to play now.' I said, 'O.K., you want to play, play. This is your decision.'

Although Mr. Kamsky's father no longer hovers over his matches, Mr. Kamsky does take his wife, Alisa, whom he met in Russia, and their son to tournaments in the United States, an unusual practice, according to Alexander Shabalov, a grandmaster.

Mr. Shabalov helped train Mr. Kamsky in the early 1990s, but quit, he said, after Rustam punched him for offering a friendly greeting to a rival of Mr. Kamsky's. (Rustam denied hitting Mr. Shabalov, saying that Mr. Shabalov quit on his contract to train his son, and while leaving them he walked into a door.)

Mr. Shabalov said he harbored no ill feelings toward the son, who he said has changed since his comeback. He's a different person, Mr. Shabalov said.

Back then he was his father's puppet. He didn't have a word in any decision beyond the board. Right now he is a mature adult. He's a nice person to speak to. There is nothing left from his notorious bad social skills.

Still, Gata Kamsky is guarded when talking about himself or his family. When asked about his relationship with his father, Mr. Kamsky crossed his arms and said, Why bring my father into all of this?

He agreed to be interviewed at the law office of his stepmother, Bella Kamskaya, a week after winning a tournament in Siberia that gave him a shot at the championship, and a prize of $120,000.

Later this year he must play Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, a former world champion. They are negotiating about terms and venue. The winner will play for the title against the winner of a match in October between Viswanathan Anand of India, the current champion, and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia.

Mr. Kamsky said that although he is again in the upper ranks of chess, he does not socialize much with other top players. I treat them as colleagues -- not as enemies, but not as friends. It is civil, he said. He added, I prefer to have my life private.

[Illustration]PHOTO: After playing for the world championship of chess in 1996, Gata Kamsky dropped out of the game and went to law school. (PHOTOGRAPH BY OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)