CHESS : INTERNATIONAL NEWS

The Pan Pacific International in San Francisco was won by the legendary Victor Korchnoi of Switzerland. Korchnoi, twice a challenger for the world championship, scored an undefeated 8-3. The 63-year-old grandmaster was by far the oldest player in the field.

The 1994 U.S. champion, Boris Gulko of New Jersey, and John Nunn of England tied for second place at 7 1/2-3 1/2. Gulko matched Korchnoi’s five wins, but lost a game to Nick de Firmian. Nunn had four wins and no losses.

Other scores: Nick de Firmian (Berkeley), 6 1/2-4 1/2; Robert Huebner (Germany), 6-5; Larry Christiansen (New York) and women’s world champion Xie Jun (China), 5 1/2-5 1/2; Walter Browne (Berkeley), 5-6; Josh Waitzkin (New York), 4-7; and Maurice Ashley (New York), Zsofia Polgar (Hungary) and Jonathan Tisdall (Norway), 3 1/2-7 1/2.

The tournament was sponsored by the Mechanics Institute Chess Club and Mindscape, the Novato company that publishes the Chessmaster 4000 computer program.

Gata Kamsky of New York defeated Viswanathan Anand of India Thursday in the first game of their Professional Chess Assn. match in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Surprisingly, Anand, the world’s fastest grandmaster, lost on time at move 33, seven moves before the time control. The winner of the 12-game match will challenge Garry Kasparov in the 1995 PCA world championship.

LOCAL NEWS

Andranik Maissian of West Hills has become the 1995 Southern California high school champion. Maissian, a 10th-grader at El Camino High School, scored 5-1 in the 40-player Open section of the Southern California Chess Federation (SCCF) State High School Championship last weekend in Bell Gardens, edging Henry Yan of Alhambra on tiebreak. The SCCF will pay Maissian’s way to the prestigious Denker Tournament of High School Champions in August.

Jonathan Goldfarb, Albert Tom and David Tom tied for third place with scores of 4 1/2-1 1/2. Led by Yan and the Tom brothers, Alhambra High School took the team championship for the second consecutive year. Harvard-Westlake School of Studio City finished second, and Schurr High School of Montebello was third.

The under-1300 section attracted 66 players. The individual star was Rafael Dominguez, who scored a perfect 5-0. Bell Gardens High School finished first in the team competition, followed by Paramount High School and San Marino High School.

Recently scholastic organizers have debated whether elementary and junior high school students should compete with high schoolers. This time, the SCCF devised a compromise, allowing younger players to enter the tournament, but making them eligible to win prizes only in their own grades. A delegation from St. Paul the Apostle School in Westwood earned the elementary team championship, and SPA students Edward Schloss, Elizabeth de la Torre, Matthew Garza, David de la Torre, Bridget Kilroy, Joseph Farar and William Surlow swept all of the grade prizes. In fact, the SPA contingent scored enough points to finish in second place among all teams in both sections of the tournament.

The SCCF State Elementary Championship, a six-round tournament for students in grades K-6, takes place Saturday at Bell Gardens High School in Bell Gardens. For more information, call Ed Portillo at (818) 282-6798.