US Championship 1994 — Key West

Fourteen of the country's strongest players met in Key West for a 13-round round-robin that doubled as America's FIDE Zonal qualifier, and Boris Gulko made the field look ordinary — undefeated at 9½/13, a full point and a half clear of the pack. It was a long-delayed vindication: Gulko had shared the 1977 Soviet title in Leningrad, then spent years frozen out of competition as a refusenik before reaching the United States in 1986. At 47, he became the only player ever to have held both the Soviet and United States championships.

◇Gulko in a class of his own

Gulko went through the 13 rounds without a loss, and the margin only grew as the tournament wore on. Christiansen and Seirawan shared second on 8, a point and a half back, with Benjamin, Shabalov and Yermolinsky bunched at 7½. For Gulko, a former Soviet co-champion who had been barred from top play for years before his 1986 emigration, it was a decisive answer at an age — 47 — when most contemporaries were well past their competitive peak.

Wire coverage of the event captured just how one-sided it was: in round eight, Gulko "went through the redoubtable [Gregory] Kaidanov like a buzz saw." First prize was $8,000, with sponsorship coming from Interplay Productions, maker of the Battle Chess CD-ROM.

◇A three-way scramble for the last Interzonal berths

Because the tournament doubled as the American Zonal, the top finishers didn't just win prize money — they won places in the FIDE Interzonal cycle. Gulko, Seirawan and Christiansen took the first three berths outright by finishing in the top three. That left two more Interzonal spots for a three-way tie at 7½ between Joel Benjamin, Alexander Shabalov and Alex Yermolinsky, settled in a rapid (15-minutes-a-side) playoff after the regular rounds finished.

Benjamin won both of his playoff games and qualified comfortably; Yermolinsky took the other spot. Shabalov, who had matched the others across 13 rounds, came away empty-handed — a result The Week in Chess summarized simply as a "nightmare in the speed playoffs."

“[Gulko] went through the redoubtable Kaidanov like a buzz saw.”

“Shabalov had a nightmare in the speed playoffs.”