Cover Story / Golden Age
A happy participant at the 2015 Kasparov Chess Foundation All-Girls Championship. The increase in female participation is a strong indicator of how popular chess has become, and the USCF now has three women in key positions: executive director (Jean Hoffman), president (Ruth Haring), and editor of Chess Life Online (Jennifer Shahade).
continued from p. 40 Finegold and Robson,
and most recently former World Champion Garry Kasparov and English legend Nigel Short. Equally importantly to the overall
development of chess here is the fact that there are a number of strong domestic tournaments which feature players from the universities mentioned above. There is an annual SPICE Cup Open tournament which serves not only as a high-level learning environment for the Webster chess team, but also as fertile training grounds for other talented players who are looking to improve. Talented young players such as FM Kostya Kavutskiy and GM Kayden Troff have earned norms in these events. UTD has also run various strong invita-
tional events which afforded many oppor tu nities for top talent to improve. Recently they held the UTD versus USA Junior All-Star event which was yet another opportunity for young American GMs such as Sam Sevian and Kayden Troff to continue their move towards the upper echelons. Of course when you import high-level
talent from other countries to populate the ranks of college teams here in the U.S., there are some players who think that perhaps more effort should be spent developing domestic players. GM Benjamin says, “I would prefer to
develop American players [rather] than import foreign ones, but I don’t know of any instances of deserving American students who were not able to get scholar - ships to those schools. I do think collegiate chess has become ridiculous, as traditional schools for smart American players like Yale and Columbia can hardly compete with the handful of programs importing professional players.” However, he also agrees that “In the areas of those college programs there are a lot of international norm-producing tournaments with very good competition.” I asked FM Paul Truong the same
question and his reply was “Nothing is taken from U.S. college students. The standard is the same, regardless of where the applicants are from. This should serve as motivation for younger American play ers to work harder. Isn’t this the same standard [used] to get into universities? Would Ivy League schools such as Yale, Columbia, or Princeton admit students with a C or D average and low SAT scores?” He goes on to state “Webster University is the number one college chess program in the United States and arguably in the world. We have had students with ratings from 1000 to 2800, and we have a wide range of scholarships. Everyone is welcome to apply.” GM Fedorowicz had a much more
succinct answer when he said “I’m a Yankees fan, so I’m all for buying teams. But not for chess.” Fedorowicz also spoke about the fact
that some of the players who came to the U.S. to play collegiate chess have switched federations and are now playing for the U.S. John said that he doesn’t like that Anna Sharevich, Katerina Nemcova, Nazi Paikidze, and Wesley So are able to play in the U.S. Championship, Olympiad, and World Team events so soon after switching federations. “I think there should be a three-year rule before they’re allowed to play. It used to be like that.” He also pointed out that he “would have
been annoyed in 1986 at my first Olympiad if I had been bumped for a recent import.” Specifically when speaking about the Olympiad, GM Fedorowicz said that we “should be looking out for guys like Naroditsky, Shankland, and Robson.” In fact, both Shankland and Robson
have some Olympic experience, with each having served as the alternates in the last two Olympiads. Robson was board five in Instanbul, Turkey, in 2012 and Shankland filled that role last year in Tromsø, Norway, winning a gold medal on board five. Both achieved success. Robson’s was
more modest perhaps, scoring +3, but winning admiration from none other than
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PHOTO: JORGE BARRERA
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