The Great Migration by Boris Gulko

The Great Migration

By Boris Gulko and Gabriel Schoenfeld

American chess is spreading from the rimland to the heartland. The driving force in this tectonic shift is Susan Polgar, the oldest of the three famous chessplaying sisters. Polgar is the former women’s world champion and the current chairman of the United States Chess Federation. For the past several years, operating out of the chess center she created in Queens, she organized the most significant round-robin tournaments in the U.S. But Susan has now moved to Lubbock, Texas, where on the campus of Texas Tech University, she has created SPICE, the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.

SPICE was recently the site of a tournament devoted to the memory of Samuel Reshevsky, the great American grandmaster. The winner of the tournament was Eugene Perelshteyn, one of the strongest non-professional players in the world. Perelshteyn is equally at home on the offensive and the defensive. Here is his game against one of the New York Sun’s two columnists from the last round. Perelshteyn is from Boston, which is not an accident if one consids that most of America’s chess talent remains concentrated in the rimland. If Lubbock is really going to become the center of American chess life, SPICE has its work cut out for it.

Perelshteyn, Eugene – Gulko, Boris [E17]
SPICE Cup International Chess Tournament
Lubbock, Texas USA (9), 16.11.2007

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Bb7 5.Bg2 Be7 6.0-0 0-0 7.d5 exd5 8.Nh4 c6 9.cxd5 Nxd5 10.Nf5 Nc7 11.e4 d5 12.Nc3 Re8 13.Bf4 Nba6 14.Qg4 g6 15.Nh6+ Kg7 16.Nf5+ Kh8 17.Nh6 Rf8 18.Rad1 Bf6 19.exd5 Nxd5 20.Ne4 Bc8 21.Qe2 Nxf4 22.Nxf7+ Kg7 23.gxf4 Qe7 24.Ne5 Bxe5 25.fxe5 Qxe5 26.f4 Qe7 27.Qc4 Nc5 28.Qc3+ Kg8 29.Nxc5 Qxc5+ 30.Qxc5 bxc5 1/2-1/2

Click here to replay the game.

This will be in the New York Sun and Jerusalem Post tomorrow.

http://www.nysun.com/article/67318