Cover Stories with Chess Life

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is someone you might not have heard of yet, but I’m guessing that you will, and soon. FM Sandeep Sethuraman is the author of our March cover story on the K-12 Grade Championships, held last December in National Harbor, Maryland. Sandeep scored 6.5/7 to claim clear first in the 11th Grade Championship, and afterwards, he reached out to me to see if he might write something for Chess Life or Chess Life Kids. Perfect timing — I was looking for someone to write about the K-12, and here we are. At age 15, Sethuraman is rated 2465 USCF, and the 24th rated player under the age of 21. He has earned three IM norms, meaning that once he pushes his FIDE rating over 2400 — he’s 19 points away — he will become an IM. But Sandeep is more than ‘just’ a chess player. A junior at BASIS Chandler in Chandler, AZ, he is an excellent student, and his non-profit, The Chess Effect, has raised money for foster care children and works to teach children to underprivileged youth.

Today’s guest on "Cover Stories with Chess Life" is one of the authors of our January cover story on the 2022 U.S. Championships, and she is also — breaking news here — starting up a regular column for Chess Life. She is the woman with the purple hair, WGM Tatev Abrahamyan. Tatev began her chess journey at age eight in Armenia. After winning medals in European youth championships, she moved to America in 2001, and her success continued. She has played in every — or nearly every — U.S. Championship since 2004, with no small amount of success, despite not yet taking home the first place hardware. Tatev has also been a stalwart member of our international Olympiad teams, including our 2022 team in Chennai, India, which her teammate WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova reported on in our December issue. Tatev scored 7/9 to help Team USA finish in fourth place, just off the medal podium. Tatev is currently a brand Ambassador for Chessup, a chess smartboard startup from Bryght Labs in Kansas. Long a mainstay of West Coast chess, she is now a Midwesterner, “enjoying” our winters as she makes a move from Kansas City to St. Louis. We’ll ask what it’s like to be thousands of miles from the ocean, and to have to keep her chess level while being a working stiff like the rest of us. This month’s issue of Chess Life also sees Tatev’s first column on “Getting to Work,” where, at least at first, she will offer a number of “how-tos” for chess improvers looking to work on their game. I’m very excited to see how this all turns out, and to use some of her tips in my own chess practice!

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is one of the authors of our December cover story on the 2022 FIDE Olympiad. She is our Women’s top board, WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova. Begim, as she is often called, was born in Uzbekistan, and saw chess success at a young age, winning the U12 bronze at the World Youth in 2011. After earning both her WIM title and WGM title in 2015, her success continued, representing her country at the 2016 and 2018 Olympiads, and winning the Uzbek Women’s Championship in 2018. After coming to America to study at the University of Missouri and play on their chess team, Begim became a fixture in American chess. She competed in the 2021 and 2022 U.S. Women’s Championships, finishing second in 2021 and in the middle of the pack this year, and she held down the top board for the Women’s Olympiad team in Chennai, telling her story to Chess Life readers in our November issue.

Today’s guest on "Cover Stories with Chess Life" is our first returning guest. He’s the man with the fancy hat: Grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi. Elshan is the author of our November cover story on the 2022 U.S. Open, where, after a thrilling Armageddon match with GM Aleksey Sorokin, he finished second on tiebreaks. As the highest finishing American flagged player, he earned a seat at the 2022 U.S. Championship. Born in Tehran, Iran, Elshan moved to the US in 2012 to attend college at Texas Tech and play on their chess team. He won the 2017 US Chess Grand Prix, the 2016 Washington International, and the Rilton Cup in Stockholm, Sweden in 2020. His most recent tournament was the U.S. Championship, where... well, let’s just say that things didn’t quite go according to plan. A coach and author, Elshan has worked with American juniors both privately and at international events, and in 2020 he published Sherlock’s Method: The Working Tool for the Club Player, co-written with WGM Sabina Foisor. Today we talk to Elshan ‘on the road,’ as he takes a break from his travels to speak with us.

My guest on this special edition of Cover Stories is Caroline King, the photographer who shot our July cover photo of the 2022 National High School Championship, which was held in Memphis in April. Caroline — the sister of previous guest Alex King, the author of our July cover story on the High School  — was on-site in Memphis, taking some of the best photos of a US Chess event that I’ve seen in my time with the organization. To my knowledge, that issue of Chess Life was the first time that a brother and sister were the author and photographer for the cover story. Alex and I spent a lot of time talking about the High School and Caroline’s photography, but it seemed kind of brotastic to be talking about Caroline and not talking to her. This is an attempt to fix that faux pas. Please welcome Caroline King, who may be the first photographer ever featured on this program.   - Cover Stories with Chess Life" hosted by Chess Life and Chess Life Online Editor John Hartmann, goes in depth and behind the scenes of each month’s Chess Life cover story.  Listen to the whole family of US Chess podcasts at https://new.uschess.org/podcasts

Today’s guest on Cover Stories is the author of our July cover story on the 2022 National High School Championship, which was held in Memphis in April. He is also the author of a series on the Tarrasch defense that will wrap in our August issue, and he has written quite a few pieces for US Chess publications in these past few years. Newly minted FM Alex King is a teacher, player, and father, currently residing in Memphis, TN with his wife and daughter. He comes from a very talented family, with musicians and artists of multiple stripes, including his sister, Caroline, who was the photographer at the 2022 National High School and whose photo graces the cover of the issue. Alex is a skilled pianist, and he often posts videos of his original compositions to his social media accounts. I’m speaking to Alex today after having the toughest time scheduling this interview. He was on vacation, then I was on vacation, and then we both had conflicts. But now we’ve clear the time to get to talk, and I expect to learn a lot about Alex in the time we have.

Our bonus Candidates preview is out! Chess Life and Chess Life Online editor John Hartmann chats with GM Jacob Aagaard about the Candidates, Magnus Carlsen possibly not playing in the next World Championship, the new tiebreak regulations, and why Sergey Karjakin may or may not have deserved a red card. Aagaard will be doing daily annotations for our CLO Candidates coverage, exclusively for Chess Life Online. Keep up with all the Candidates news at https://new.uschess.org/news and https://new.uschess.org/category/candidates over the next few weeks!

Vjekoslav (“Vjeko”) Nemec is a Croatian candidate master, and the main proprietor of the chess website chessentials.com. When I put out the call on Twitter for an author to write about the Grand Prix for our June issue, Vjeko put himself forward, and after a bit of investigation, I was happy to hand him the project. Vjeko’s story in chess begins, as so many of ours do, in games with family members. But soon he really caught the bug, and after some trials and tribulations, he played in his first tournaments in college. After graduating with a master’s degree in electrical engineering, he took his place in the field, but chess remained an itch that he could never quite scratch. So he began writing about the game, on his own website and on Quora.com, and kept playing. In 2020 he took a job with Chessable as a content editor – a job that many might see as a dream job! – but this year, in 2022, he left their employ to strike out on his own as an independent content creator. His Chess Life cover story is part of that work, and – speaking as his editor – I think it bodes well for his future in our game.

This month's guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is... me.  John is the author of our May 2022 cover story on the 2022 Spring Classic. He also wrote about Jamie Foxx's games with Jude Acers in New Orleans, and he also contributed his semi-regular "In the News" column. John Hartmann is the editor of Chess Life and Chess Life Online. He was named the 2020 and 2021 Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. Away from the keyboard, John is a husband, a father, a coffee snob, a Yankees fan, a Cardiff City Bluebirds supporter, and an occasional presenter for GM Jacob Aagaard's Killer Chess Training. You can find him on twitter at @hartmannchess. Thanks to IM John Watson for stepping in to interview me!

Today’s guest on "Cover Stories with Chess Life" is well known to American chess fans. He’s the man with the fancy hat: Grandmaster Elshan Moradiabadi.  Elshan is the author of our April cover story on the Tata Steel tournament earlier this year, won by Magnus Carlsen. Instead of a traditional, blow-by-blow account, Elshan’s analysis focused on the most interesting and instructive moments in the event... although one of the most instructive may be found in a future issue of Chess Life.  Born in Tehran, Iran, Elshan moved to the US in 2012 to attend college at Texas Tech and play on their chess team. He won the 2017 US Chess Grand Prix, the 2016 Washington International, and the Rilton Cup in Stockholm, Sweden in 2020. His most recent tournament was the 2022 Spring Classic at the Saint Louis Chess Club, where he finished with an even score in the B group.  A coach and author, Elshan has worked with American juniors both privately and at international events, and last year he published Sherlock’s Method: The Working Tool for the Club Player, co-written with WGM Sabina Foisor.  Today we talk to Elshan from his home in Durham, North Carolina, where he’s taking time out of a full day of teaching to speak to us.   

Today’s guest on Cover Stories is a man in demand. By my count Harold Scott is making his third podcast recording today. He has been a guest on Evan Rabin’s Premier Chess Podcast along with GM Joel Benjamin, a feat that he repeated in a joint appearance with Ben Johnson and the Perpetual Chess Podcast. But today it’s just him. Harold is the author of our March cover story about eight year old Megan Paragua, who recently became a rated expert. Megan’s uncle is New York GM Mark Paragua, but as we learn from Harold’s piece, she’s doing a lot of the hard work to improve on her own! Harold Scott is a chess teacher and coach currently residing in the Bronx, New York. He is also a FIDE Instructor, a US Chess Senior tournament director, a rated expert, and a writer to boot. His first book, Winning the World Open, is co-authored with GM Joel Benjamin and released in January of this year. It’s an absolutely fantastic read, and any fan of American chess history and lore would do well to pick it up.

Yes, it's January. And yes, this is the December edition of Cover Stories. (Look for the January EP soon!) GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is the author of our December cover story, “My American Tour,” which discusses his victory at the 2021 Sinquefield Cup and his second place finish at the 9LX (or 960) tournament directly afterwards. We’ve been trying to set up time for an interview for a few weeks, but Maxime’s packed schedule meant that today – January 2nd – was our first opportunity to record. It turns out that this was fortunate indeed, as in the interim, Maxime played in a number of events, including the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Warsaw, where he became the FIDE World Blitz Champion. We discuss his victory in the Blitz, his visit to Dubai and thoughts on the World Championship match, and his long sojourn in Saint Louis. We also learn about his openings, his technical setup while traveling, his time on the Carlsen team in 2016, and his ongoing love of mathematics.

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is the author of our November 2021 cover story on the U.S. Open, which he won with a dominating performance and score of 8½/9. More recently, he finished in shared fourth through sixth place at the 2021 U.S. Championship, his +1 score leaving him just a half-point outside the playoff won by GM Wesley So. GM Alex Lenderman is one of America’s top grandmasters, and his story is one of long, hard work paying off with success. US Chess records have him playing nearly 1200 tournaments since 2001, including seemingly every event in the NYC area for many years. These include dozens of New York Masters rapid events, and closer to my heart, two Nassau Chess Club championships in 2007 and 2008. Today he has a bachelor’s degree from Webster University, where he was on their fabled chess team, and having – I think – just graduated, he is looking to a very bright future.

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is the author of our September cover story on the Prague Chess Festival and, as of the September 2021 FIDE rating list, the 26th ranked player in the world. The winner of the 2018 U.S. Championship and a stalwart on American international teams, Grandmaster Sam Shankland has already, at age 29, done almost everything there is to do in chess. He has written books for Quality Chess and the Chessable platform. He has been a second for Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. He even appeared on a reality TV show, “Kicking and Screaming,” where he and partner Caleb Garmany survived the initial cuts but were eliminated on the second episode. Shankland’s Prague performance is chronicled in our September issue, but his magical World Cup run, where he fell to GM Sergey Karjakin in the quarterfinals after defeating Jobava, Areschenko, Jumabaeyev and Svidler, is a must-read part of our October issue. He also just participated in the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz, and the Sinquefield Cup, and I’m sure he’ll have more to say about both of those events today.

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is the author of our July cover story, or, better, the package of cover stories. He is also, in many ways, its subject, as is reflected by his presence on our July cover in a magisterial photo by Ian Spanier. International Master John Donaldson has done almost everything there is to do in the world of chess. Becoming an International Master in 1983, Donaldson has been a successful player, author, and team captain, piloting American teams in international play since at least 1986. For 20 years Donaldson ran the Chess Room at the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco; now retired, we will have to find out what lies ahead for him. The author of at least a dozen books, his newest, Bobby Fischer and his World, is the nominal subject of our July cover story. John talks about the origins of the project, what he has learned since the book was published, and what Fischer mysteries remain unsolved. (Perhaps you can help solve them!) An excerpt is also included.

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is the co-author of our June cover story on the 2020-2021 Candidates Tournament. No, it’s not me. It’s Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard. Jacob Aagaard is one of the most lauded authors and trainers in the chess world today. The winner of the Boleslavsky medal from the FIDE Trainers Commission – a group for which he later served as director for a time – Aagaard has written twenty plus books under his own name, and more than a few under others! Aagaard is the 2007 British Champion and the 2012 Scottish Champion. He has played on two Olympiad teams – Scotland and his native Denmark – and worked as the national coach for the Danish team and for the Indian Women. Over the years Aagaard has worked as a trainer for some of the world’s best players, including GMs Boris Gelfand, Sam Shankland, Surya Ganguly, and Sabino Brunello. Most of the top Indian juniors have devoured his books. And with good reason. Today I speak to Jacob at his home in Glasgow. Jacob, welcome to Cover Stories with Chess Life. How are you doing?

Today’s guest on Cover Stories is Taylor Kingston, a well-known chess author and historian who I tapped to write our May cover story on the 1946 U.S. Championship match between Arnold Denker and Herman Steiner. I was looking for a historical cover story, and when I saw that it had been 75 years this May since the match in the 2021 International Chess Calendar (published by Russell Enterprises), I reached out to Taylor to ask if he’d be interested in writing it. Imagine my surprise when he told me that he was also the editor of the calendar! Taylor Kingston has done just about everything there is to do in the world of chess journalism. He has written over a hundred book reviews for the old ChessCafe website, along with feature articles, interviews, and books under his own name. The newest, Edgard Colle: Caissa’s Wounded Warrior, is just out from Russell Enterprises. He has also done editorial work behind the scenes for some of your favorite books. I’m speaking to Taylor today at his home. Or, I should say, his new home, as he has just moved. Taylor, welcome to Cover Stories with Chess Life. How is everything going with unpacking?

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is pulling double-duty: he is the author of the April 2021 cover story, and he is also its subject. GM Hans Niemann is, to my knowledge, America’s newest grandmaster, having crossed the 2500 barrier in December after earning his three GM norms. The title became official on January 22, 2021 after FIDE’s final approval. This final step was the culmination of a long road for Niemann, chronicled in his article “The Road to Grandmaster.” We hear about Niemann’s early days, about his scholastic successes and later struggles, and about the mental changes he needed to make to finally achieve his goals.

Good time of day to all of you, my friends on the Cover Stories with Chess Life podcast. There are some people who, simply by the effect of their personality or their voice, become larger than life figures in their field. Today’s guest, Grandmaster (and everyone’s favorite Uncle) Alex Yermolinsky, is one of those people. A St. Petersburg native, Alex emigrated to the United States in 1989 after nearly a decade working as a coach in the Soviet Union. Soon his rating skyrocketed, earning the GM title and reaching the 2600s (back when that meant something), and Alex was rewarded with invitations to elite events like Hastings, Tilburg, and Wijk aan Zee. He is a veteran of many US Olympiad teams, and the winner of the 1993 (shared with Shabalov) and 1996 US Championships alongside buckets of Opens over the years. But Alex was never simply a player. His entrepreneurial spirit was apparent from his earliest days in America. The Yermo Chess Academy, dating from around the turn of the century and based in Cleveland, was an early effort, paired with a must-read Internet site that still holds up when found on archive.org. Some of the fruits of that website, and certainly a lot of its spirit, can be found in his 1999 The Road to Chess Improvement, a title that was published to rapturous reviews and that remains one of my favorite books. Alex became the Grandmaster in Residence at the Mechanics Institute in 1999 and held the office through 2007. He was elected to the US Chess Hall of Fame in 2012. Currently he resides in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a relative hop, skip, and jump from my own home here in Omaha, where (as his ChessBase bio says) “between his chess work online he plays snooker and spends time outdoors - happy as a clam.” Anyone who has met Alex knows that he is a man of great opinion, and that he is not afraid to share those opinions with anyone who asks. That’s why I asked him to write our February cover story on the Skilling Open, where Wesley So ruined Magnus Carlsen’s birthday by defeating him in the Finals. Alex is a great analyst, as the article reminds us, but he’s also an excellent writer, and I’m glad to bring him back to the pages of a magazine that he once (due to the influence of a previous editor, and following Bobby Fischer) called Chess Lies.

If Jazz is America’s first great cultural export to the world, hip-hop is its second, and perhaps most important. From its earliest days, emerging from DJ and MC battles in the south-south Bronx, the rise and growth of hip hop music and culture has been exponential, and today there is no corner of the globe where hip hop has not taken root, often in surprising ways. Originally born from the grinding experience of 1970s urban American life, today’s hip hop is a true creolization of cultures, mutating and transforming itself as it is constantly reinvented by its new fans and practitioners. There are few who are as important in the history of hip-hop as is Robert Diggs, known to the world as RZA from Wu-Tang Clan. The main producer for most of the Wu-Tang’s albums, RZA is also an MC, a student of world religions and meditation, a practitioner of the martial arts, and a chess player. Chess has long been intertwined with hip-hop culture and the Black American experience, from the barbershop like the one run by my friend Jerome Helm here in Omaha – check him out in the January issue of Chess Life Faces column – to the halls of academia, as shown by my old colleague Dr. Tommy J. Curry in his 2008 article “Hip Hop Tactics.” That’s in the Philosophy Looks at Chess volume edited by Ben Hale, where my “Garry Kasparov is a Cyborg” article can also be found. What becomes apparent, when reading RZA’s books like the Tao of Wu and when reading this month’s Chess Life cover story, written by our guest Adisa Banjoko, is that chess and hip-hop are tied together, and that chess can be much more than the staid enterprise we sometimes limit ourselves to in our imagination. We saw part of that in The Queen’s Gambit, a topic that Adisa talked about at length in a recent podcast episode (#141 of The Bishop’s Chronicles). We see a lot more of it in the interview, which ties chess to spirituality, the martial arts, and diet – veganism and tea. It’s a very different vision of our game than the hegemonic image would indicate, and I think a vision that we would all do well to consider these days. Adisa “The Bishop” Banjoko is an author, an educator, and the founder of the Hip Hop Chess Federation. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram.