Category: Chess Journalism

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Heading into the current Chess Olympiad in Chennai, the USA team in the Open Section were massive rating favorites. Today, with their 1-3 loss against India 2 they are all but eliminated from medal contention at all.

We can all speculate about the reasons for this severe underperformance all we like, but ultimately it boils down to poor form at the wrong time, along with some opponents who have shown quite good form. This is chess, it happens.

We can also engage in the quite enjoyable activity of Monday morning quarterbacking and speculate how a team composed of youngsters such as Xiong, Sevian, Niemann, etc. would have done. In fact, I kind of played that game earlier today with an elite GM. I also played it with another friend. It’s fun!

Let’s be honest though, all of those thoughts are fueled by hindsight. It’s easy to say that things should have been done differently once they have gone somewhat wrong. Yet had we sent a team that was not the best one we could field in terms of rating, then fans would be screaming bloody murder. So the speculation has to remain as a “what if” – or does it?

Imagine a world in which the USA bids for, and receives, an Olympiad. We can then field two teams. In fact, if there is an odd number of teams, we can even field a third. What would that look like? Now we could be taking the same action as India and seeing what our youngsters can do. Imagine USA 2, a team composed of Xiong, Sevian, Niemann, Robson, and Swiercz. USA 3, where we can get a veteran like Onischuk back at the board on a team where we could get experience for players like Yoo and Mishra.

I would love to see this dream become a reality. Let’s keep growing chess here in the US.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

While you’re here, let me ask for your help. I’d like to keep this blog and journey going in perpetuity, but it’s not free to me.

If you feel like helping me out, and if you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

I saw the list of 2022 Samford Fellowship awards a couple of days ago, and it was nice to see two female winners this year in Carissa Yip and Alice Lee. In fact, this is the third year in a row that Carissa has made the list, and I imagine that she has been putting the funds to good use based on her continued success at the board.

It’s also Chess Olympiad season right now, and so I’m enthusiastically keeping an eye on the performance of the USA teams. One thing that has struck me is that while the USA Open team has become far and away the team to beat, the USA Women’s team has not achieved nearly that same level of success.

In fact, our ladies have won only two team medals in their entire history (Silver in 2004, and Bronze in 2008) and 3/5 of the team in 2022 have been there since the times of those medals.

This isn’t to cast disparagement on the performance of our current female Olympians. As always, I quite enjoy watching their performance, and am hopeful that they will wind up outperforming their starting position. Yet I keep coming back to the thought that it would be nice if we could create some of the same opportunities for female chess players here at home that we have for men.

The importation of talent such as Levon Aronian, Wesley So and Lenier Dominguez, along with the growth of a player like Sam Shankland mean that some prior stalwarts of the US team, such as Ray Robson and Var Akobian, no longer have a spot on the team. In fact, Shankland only has his spot due to Nakamura turning it down. A fact that Sam is refreshingly honest about as he often openly wonders if the current Olympiad will be his last, which he has done since his first.

Yet on the ladies’ side, we are seeing the return, yet again, of Irina Krush, Anna Zatonskih, and Tatev Abrahamyan. Again, please don’t misunderstand, I enjoy watching these ladies play, and often admire their games. I used to follow Tatev’s games quite closely when I was a French Defense player. I can’t help thinking, though, what would it be like if the USA was producing GM’s amongst female players like we are amongst the men?

That brings me back to the topic of this post. How nice would it be if there were some sort of Samford-style award that was for female players only. How long before we would have a Women’s Olympic Team that would be perennial medal contenders?

How long before we would be producing more professional female players? Many of the top US Women’s players, such as Jennifer Yu, seem to have little to no interest in continuing as professionals. In the current climate, it’s hard to blame them.

Anyways, food for thought. I’d love to hear your comments.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

My Patreon page is now live!

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Recently I took a spin as guest host for Ben Johnson’s wildly successful Perpetual Chess podcast.

I interviewed Ben about the first five years of the show as we celebrated the shows anniversary.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

My Patreon page is now live!

If you feel like helping me out, and if you can spare it, please click here and become a supporter. Even $1 a month can help me continue this project.

A few weeks ago, the chess world received the sad and shocking news that NTD Wayne Clark had passed away.

Most people knew Wayne as a TD, and I did as well. I worked for Wayne at events on a number of occasions. However, my first interaction with Wayne was as a player. He and I played in a round robin FIDE event.

The game was not great, and perhaps a draw was the logical result.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

First let me say that I really appreciate the fact that a player of Baadur Jobava’s caliber is streaming. More to the point, it’s not just him streaming blitz and puzzle rush constantly. Those things are entertaining, but the market is pretty saturated.

This morning I saw that Jobava was streaming himself analyzing some Kasparov games. I popped on and was curious as to how many subs he has. Just as one of his subscribers was saying to a mod that they needed some commands, I happened to type the command !subs, which drew no response as clearly no command has been set up for that.

The sub said “see” and I said “yep!” to which I was immediately timed out for 10 minutes. I sent a message to the mod letting them know that I just wanted to see the level of support since I was thinking about subscribing and the response was that I would be banned next time.

Top players streaming on Twitch? Awesome.

This? Nope. 

Bad modding kills Twitch channels.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

Yesterday a video surfaced which was filmed in Saint Louis a couple of years ago, and as I was both there and am clearly visible in the last frame I feel compelled to comment.

The problem with videos shot in a casual environment in general is that they tell only part of a story. The problem with this one specifically is that it’s heavily edited from several clips and is designed to lead a narrative.

Those of us who were there know the true story. We know what the mood of the evening was; who was out of control and who wasn’t; who was ordering drinks for whom, etc.

The heavily edited video is designed to evoke a specific response from those who will see it. Sadly, it leaves a lot of the context out. For those of us who were there, we know the manner in which these things were said and happened.

I do not deign to speak for either Hikaru or Eric, and I consider both of them to be my friends. We’ve had some enjoyable times together, and I certainly hope to have more in the future, but I cannot in good conscience let my part go unsaid here. This video is trash, and an embarrassment to the chess community as a whole.

On a personal level, I find it unconscionable that someone would release edited footage of private moments which they either know for certain, or should at the very least strongly suspect, will be taken out of context. Most curious is the fact that in the beginning of the video, during the blitz match, the video cuts away quickly, not allowing the viewer to see that the overall mood was pretty relaxed at this point.

There were many things which led from the friendly blitz to the “fight” outside, and without having been there to see them, viewers of the video will simply be misled. I put the quotes around fight because, once again, it seemed from where I was standing to be a pretty friendly encounter.

As a dedicated and serious chess fan I hate to see this kind of dirty laundry made public. This does nothing to enhance the popularity of the game, and all involved in the release and sharing should be ashamed of themselves.

Chris Wainscott

Back in the early days of the Soviet Union preparing to become a true world power on the chess scene they made a change to their national championship format.

In 1929 for the first time there was not just an invited field.  Instead, there were four preliminary groups which then became two Semi Finals where the top two finishers in each qualified for the double round robin final.

Over the years they refined this format and from this sprang the most dominant nation of all time.  In fact Russia remains a powerhouse on the world chess scene, almost routinely churning out top 100 players, and in no small part I believe it’s due to the fact that remnants of this system remain today with the Higher League and Super Final  which continue to give up and coming players chances to improve when they need it most.

Last summer I started mulling these concepts over in my mind to figure out if they could work here at home.  I did this in anticipation of Dominguez making his federation switch, which has of course happened now.

Here’s what got me thinking.  The current format in the US Championships, which has become more or less standard, is a 12 player round robin.

The first round robin championship I attended was 2014.  For that tournament the players could qualify with a high 2500 FIDE rating.

Here is the final table:

The format for invites is that there are four automatic invites which go to the defending champion (Kamsky), the US Open Champion (Friedel), the US Junior Open Champion (Naroditsky), and a wild card (Molner).

The rest were invited by rating, so as you see 2582 (Lenderman) was good enough.  Of course Hikaru turned down his invite so that has to be taken into consideration, but still, just five years ago the field was at this level.

Now let’s look at the top ten FIDE rated players in the US.

This is active players.  Technically Dominguez isn’t active, so now you have to insert his name into this field and that means that we now have several players over 2600 (Akobian, Lenderman, Zherebukh, Naroditsky, and Izoria) who aren’t even on the radar.

And not all of our top 10 players above will qualify either since spots will go to Gareyev (US Open), Liang (US Junior Champ) and a wild card.

Next consider the fact that we have some insanely talented juniors rushing up the rating ranks such as Awonder Liang, Ruifeng Li, Christopher Yoo, etc.  Sure, there’s no telling how far they may go, but it’s certain there will be even more behind them.

So where does that leave us?  Well, clearly we are becoming one of those nations where many players who would easily qualify for the national championship almost anywhere else won’t qualify for ours.

The Saint Louis Chess Club has done a wonderful job in somewhat addressing this with the seasonal “Classic” tournaments, e.g. the Summer Classic, Winter Classic, etc., but that will only go so far.

What I would like to see is for the US to take what I see as the next logical step in the process and add a semifinal layer to our championship.

In my mind it’s a 12 player round robin final with half of the field seeded in (defending champion, then the top five players by rating) with two other 12 player round robins sending in three players each to complete the field.

This would mean that a total of 30 players are taking place in the national championship rather than only 12.  This means that for spots 7-30 on our rating list, most of them will get at least one more extremely strong professional level round robin than they are now each year, and some (the top three finishers in each Semi) will get a second.

Who are players 7-30?  They are:

Now you have some young talent like Holt and Burke who will be able to get in and fight for a spot in the finals.  The current system means that they are not likely to ever make it, and certainly not numerous times.

Why “most” and not “all” of spots 7-30?  Because the Semifinals are now where you would seed in the US Open winner, the US Junior Closed winner, and organizer wildcards.  Not all of them will necessarily be in the top 30 by rating, but that would be OK.

So what is the point of all of this?  It’s that if the USA is ever truly going to become a strong and sustaining chess nation then we need to make sure that the players who are somewhere between 2500-2650 continue to get chances to improve in a professional setting.  The life of a chess professional outside the top 20 or so is hard.  This could make it a little less so.

My fear is that if we don’t do this then we are risking dropping right back off the cliff once the Caruana/Dominguez/Nakamura/Shankland/So generation hang it up.

Of course this would require some investment from Saint Louis.  Factoring in prizes and expenses this could cost something like $100,000 per year.  Yet it just seems like the logical next step.

Let’s hope someone out there is listening.

Til Next Time,

Chris Wainscott

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