"The Kid" Lives On

His name is Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu. I saw him play chess in the FIDE World Chess Championship held in Las Vegas at Caesar's Palace in August, 1999. Back then, he was slender, short haired, and extremely handsome and the last time I saw him in person - trailing him down a large and very empty hallway at Caesar's Palace on my way to a pay phone to call Isis and make plans to hook up for the night (the match ended about 9:20 p.m. in which Khalifman eliminated him), he was in tight black jeans, he had on white socks (eek!) and black shoes. They looked like tennies. I thought there was just a bit of a swagger in his walk, as well there should have been. I stopped at the pay phone bank on my left just before the escalators; he went on to the escalators and disappeared downward from my view. He wasn't old enough at the time, to get a drink legally (21). Now he's overweight and has a ponytail. Yech. But, just as he did in 1999 in Las Vegas, he can pull out brilliant chess games from - where? His gut? His heart? Some inner magical window into another world? Who knows? Frankly, I don't care. What I DO care about is that he's still in the running for winning the chess World Cup. Bravo, man. The biggest shock of the third round of the World Cup was the defeat in tie-breaker of top seed Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, who has been on an absolute tear lately, winning everything in sight. Ivanchuk lost to Nisipeanu 2.5-3.5 after the match extended into Blitz games. In Round 4, Nisipeanu faces Karjakin. In truth, I don't know who to root for! Karjakin's name resonates with me for some reason, not least of which is I keep thinking of him as "Karkajan" which, obviously, is not his name, but in etymological terms, is a permissible variation. Anyway, from the wrong name of Karkajan is a skip and jump to the term "Shakerjan," the name for any shaman who practiced a very ancient divinatory game played by the nomadic tribes who used to roam the steppes of Kazakhstan before there was such a named "stan." I like this kid a lot. I like that "Jan" figures prominently in both words. On the other hand, Nisipeanu's name doesn't remind me of anything so much as a cheap imitation French cologne. And he certainly doesn't look like the kid he still should be - under 30. No, sadly, he now looks like a harried and much married middle aged American with too many kids and a too big mortgage and not enough money to pay for it all! Sigh. Kid, what happened? Compiled from reports at Chessdom and NDTV.com.