US Championship 1986 — Estes Park

◇The only undefeated man

Seirawan never lost, and he did not need to win often to stay ahead: six wins and nine draws were enough for a clear point. Behind him came the two players who had dominated the immediately preceding championships. Lev Alburt, champion in each of the previous two years, won seven games — more than anyone else in the tournament — but was beaten three times and finished on 9½. Joel Benjamin, 22 and from Brooklyn, reached the same 9½ by a steadier route of six wins, two losses and seven draws. Larry Christiansen and Lubomir Kavalek shared fourth and fifth on 8½.

Benjamin was the one prizewinner in the field who was not yet a grandmaster; Bisguier noted in November 1986 that the title was expected to be conferred on him at the FIDE congress in Dubai later that month. Seirawan had shared the 1981 championship with Walter Browne, so Estes Park 1986 was the first US title he held alone.

The game Bisguier chose to publish was Seirawan's win with Black against Michael Rohde — a Petroff in which Seirawan gave up the exchange for a pawn wedge on f3 and drove the white king into the open, White playing on to the time control in hope of a blunder that never came.

◇A zonal, and where it led

Because the championship was a zonal, its leading finishers moved on into the world-championship cycle. Bisguier reported at the time that the top three would represent the United States at the 1987 Interzonals, with the possibility that FIDE would seed Seirawan on rating instead — in which case Christiansen and Kavalek would play off for the vacated place.

In the end five men from Estes Park played the 1987 Interzonals. Seirawan went to Zagreb and finished second on 10/16 behind Viktor Korchnoi, advancing to the Candidates. Christiansen and Benjamin played at Szirák, where Christiansen made 9/17 and Benjamin 8½. Alburt and Kavalek went to Subotica; Kavalek withdrew after seven rounds with chronic bronchitis.

◇What the title paid

First prize was $5,556.80 — a figure set at ten cents for every member the US Chess Federation had on 1 June 1986. Benjamin and Alburt took $3,250 each, Christiansen and Kavalek $2,250.

The bottom of the table was as instructive as the top. Last place, sixteenth on 5/15, went to Nick de Firmian, who the previous summer had won the World Open and $21,000; at Estes Park his five points were worth $450, ninety dollars a point. A year later, on the same stage, he would be co-champion of the United States.