User:Chessinformant/Mike nicholas spanos

Mike Nicholas Spanos or Grecus (9th September 1986-) was born in Perugia,Italy. In December 2004 he joined the 3v3 world championship in Rome Italy.His teammates,Michael James Diekjmann (6th May 1971-) and Fabio Lorenzo Benditti(8th june 1979-) made him leader of the 'Red Team of Perugia'.As all 12 of the 13 teams Perugia had in the championship,lost.The Perugia Red team was the last to survive. They reached the last 75 players of the world in a field of 6700 players.Their accomplishment remains to these days a miracle to Italy.

 They won 12 consecutive 3v3 Matches finally falling pray to the combined power of Grandmasters,Alexei Shirov,Nigel Short and Ruslan Ponomariov with a score of 2-1.
 The only win was that of Mike Nicholas who stopped the Russian Shirov's 56 game streak without losing!

He is famous to the chess world for his sacrifice against Alexei Shirov in 7th january 2004, being age 17 and playing in Rome,Italy. Alexei Shirov many times candidate to the world title lost to the 17 year old Italian when he was attacked by a powerful and out of the blue queen sacrifice.

  The chess players in that room were so stunned of the sacrifice that they called everyone above the chessboard of the game.

The sacrifice developed in the 9th move of the Sicilian Defense is up to these days known as ' The Greek Gift' from the doer's greek nationality.

The greek gift was used by many players during the next years including Gary Kasparov vs Deep blue world title matches. Finally,Mike Nicholas quit the federation of chess forever,his teammates of that legendary feet of stength can still be found in San Sisto Perugia chess club. The chess club it is said awaits the champion to come back to action.

He was one of the best Sacrificial attackers in chess history of modern days.

            Source: Chessinformant