Cover Stories with Chess Life – Details, episodes & analysis

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 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.