CHESS : INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Two young grandmasters, Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, drew their final games to share first place in the supertournament in Dos Hermanas, Spain. Kramnik, who will turn 21 later this month, and Topalov, who celebrated his 21st birthday in March, finished with scores of 6-3. The tournament featured nine of the world’s top 10 stars.

While Kramnik and Topalov drew hard-fought ninth-round games, the third co-leader, Viswanathan Anand of India, fell to third place by losing to Gata Kamsky of New York. Anand’s 5 1/2-3 1/2 score was matched by Professional Chess Assn. world champion Garry Kasparov of Russia, who escaped a lost position when his opponent, Boris Gelfand of Belarus, blundered away a bishop on the last move of the time control.

Other scores: Miguel Illescas Cordoba (Spain), 4 1/2-4 1/2; Gelfand and Kamsky, 4-5; Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), 3 1/2-5 1/2; and Judit Polgar (Hungary) and Alexey Shirov (Spain), 3-6.

Kamsky used Dos Hermanas as a warmup for his World Chess Federation (FIDE) world championship match, which started Thursday in Elista, Russia. In the first game of the best-of-20-game match, Kamsky nearly equalized with a novelty in the Gruenfeld Defense, but Anatoly Karpov made progress in the end game. The game was adjourned and Kamsky resigned Friday without resuming play.

Games are scheduled on even-numbered days, beginning at 5 a.m. PDT. Live coverage is available from FIDE’s official Internet site, at https://chess.jet.msk.su.

LOCAL NEWS

Marc Leski won the North County G/60, a 30-player tournament of one-hour games held last Sunday in San Diego. Leski scored a perfect 4-0, half a point more than Mark Duckworth and IM Igor Ivanov.

Class prizes went to Paul Shannon, 3-1, best expert; Phillip Roth, 2 1/2-1 1/2, best A; Ian Johnson and J. Chris Parson, 3-1, tied for best B; John Goddard, 2 1/2-1 1/2, best C; and Blair Beverly, 1 1/2-2 1/2, best under 1400 or unrated. Remarkably, Johnson won his first three games before losing to Leski.

The North County Summer G/60 is scheduled Aug. 18. For more information, call Alina Markowski at (619) 743-3044.