By IANS
Moscow : Gata Kamsky of United States came one step closer to the chess World Cup when he won his second game against Latvian-born Spaniard Alexei Shirov at the FIDE Word Cup Final 2007 Friday.
The players have two more games to play in the four-game final. Earlier Kamsky and Shirov drew the first game with black.
In a very interesting game Shirov went down in a difficult ending with mutual time trouble, where Kamsky played very strongly. Shirov opened with the Sicilian Sveshnikov, which has been his favourite in this tournament and Kamsky was well prepared for it. Kamsky went for a positional and less theoretical line. Interestingly during the blitz event of the Tal Memorial last month these players faced each other in the same position.
Kamsky slowly but steadily created an advantage and outplayed Shirov. Kamsky brought his knight into play after it seemed to have been left out like a spectator. He finally won in 44 moves.
Some years back Kamsky, who was a strong contender for world title in the 1990s, gave up chess to pursue a degree in medicine. Now he is back and as strong as he was a decade ago.