Photo courtesy of Cappelle-la-Grande Chess Open
Click here to download the episode.
This week it is my great honor to talk with the five-time US Champion and 1996 FIDE World Championship Challenger, GM Gata Kamsky! Gata has just released Volume 1 of his highly anticipated games collection, Gata Kamsky - Chess Gamer, Volume 1: The Awakening 1989-1996. The recent release of this book gives us a rare opportunity to listen in as Gata Kamsky reflects on his illustrious chess career and discusses the past and future of chess. As usual, read below the break for timestamps of our discussion topics and relevant links. Enjoy!
0:00- Intro and discussion of GM Kamsky’s new book, Gata Kamsky - Chess Gamer. Gata discusses the following details:
How the project came into existence and why he gives credit to the indispensable roles played by his wife, WGM Vera Nebolsina, and the team at Thinkers Publishing for helping him push forward with the book.
How he decided on the structure of the book, which begins with the games he played when he emigrated from Russia in 1989.
12:00- Gata answers a listener's question regarding his intended audience for the book, and he reveals the classic chess book from which he drew inspiration.
17:30- What lessons about the role of psychology in chess did Gata Kamsky learn from studying Emanuel Lasker ?
20:45- What did it feel like to immigrate to the US and play former World Champion Mikhail Tal in his first tournament after arrival in the United States? Gata annotates the game in detail in his book, but you can take a look at it here.
25:45- Gata reflects on playing Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov as a teenager and in the ensuing years. This includes a discussion of his reflections on the FIDE and Professional Chess Association World Championship Cycles in the early to mid-1990’s.
36:30- A Patreon supporter of Perpetual Chess asks about Gata’s future plans with regarding to writing books.
41:00- The mysterious Moonmaster 9000 asks what chess improvement methods Gata has found to be most effective. His recommendations: 1. Study your games 2. Play frequent tournaments 3. Work on endgames. As a youth, Gata found it particularly helpful to solve the chess compositions of Sergey Kasparyan and Leonid Kubbel
54:00- Gata answers another question from a supporter of the podcast relating to why some players are able to reach their maximum potential while others are not. This segment touches on top chess players including Anish Giri, Garry Kasparov, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So and Boris Spassky. Gata also tells the story of some encounters with a young Magnus Carlsen.
1:07- Are we likely to see Gata Kamsky in another US Chess Championship?
1:11- Gata discusses his recent forays into streaming chess on Twitch, and the possibilities for chess as an e-sport. In this segment he also touches on the issues of cheating in chess and the promise of Chess960 aka Fischer Random Chess.
1:18:00- Goodbye and thank you to GM Kamsky! You can keep up with Gata via Facebook and Twitter. You can buy Gata's book from Thinkers Publishing, (where a free excerpt of the book is available), Gata Kamsky-Chess Gamer is also available from US Chess Sales, and it is coming soon to Amazon.
If you would like to help support the podcast, you can do so here.