The Championship Field

After Wesley’s So’s departure as a professional, the Webster University program has been left in the extremely capable hands of Grandmaster Ray Robson, who leads the school to its third-consecutive appearance in the President’s Cup in the weekend before the 2015 U.S. Championship begins.

Born in Guam, Robson soon after moved with his family to Florida, where his father taught him chess when he was just three years old. From 2004 to 2007, Robson finished in the top 10 at the World Youth Championship and then won SuperNationals in 2005. He defeated his first grandmaster in 2006, the same year he earned the USCF National Master title. Other impressive performances include first place in the 2005 and 2006 Pan-American Youth Championships; the 2009 U.S. Junior Championship; the 2009 World Team Championship; and the 2012 Dallas Invitational.

In 2008, Robson won his first major tournament at the Miami Open, and later that year became the youngest American to win the Grandmaster title, at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 16 days. The mark bested the record held by Hikaru Nakamura and once by the great Bobby Fischer, making Robson one of America’s brightest hopes to another world-elite GM.

Though the University of Texas offered him a chess scholarship, in 2012 Robson decided instead on the SPICE program at Webster University where, just a few months after enrolling, he won the 2012 Webster University SPICE Cup Open and eventually helped the program to back-to-back national titles. Robson also participated in the inaugural Millionaire Open in Las Vegas last October, where he took second place behind his good friend and former Webster roommate, Wesley So.

Grandmaster Alexander Onischuk began playing chess when he was six years old and has ranked as one of the top 100 players in the world for the past two decades.

Onischuk earned his GM title as a Ukranian 18-year-old in 1994, then later won the 2000 Ukranian Championship before emigrating to the U.S. the following year. For five years, he played collegiate chess for the University of Maryland, Baltimore Country (UMBC), leading the program to multiple national titles before graduating in 2006 with a degree in linguistics. He has been invited to every FIDE World Cup since 2005, winning more than 20 major tournaments along the way, including the 2006 U.S. Championship -- which he called the happiest moment of his career, having his name on a trophy alongside players such as Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy.

Onischuk was key to America’s bronze medal finishes at the 2006 and 2008 Olympiads, and delivered a gold-medal performance on board two at the 2009 World Team Championship in Bursa, Turkey.

In 2012, Alexander Onischuk was named the head coach of Texas Tech University’s chess program, helping the squad return to the President’s Cup in 2014, finishing in a close second behind Webster University. He leads the TTU program back to the Final Four of Collegiate Chess in 2015, just before the start of the U.S. Championship. Last year’s season led to national recognition, with Texas Tech named “Chess College of the Year” and Onischuk awarded “2014 Grandmaster of the Year” by the U.S. Chess Federation.

He has finished among the top three in the U.S. Championship seven times.

When Sam Shankland was just 18, he announced he would be retiring from the game of chess. Before leaving, however, he agreed to honor his previous commitments and compete in the 2010 U.S. Junior Closed Championship - the rest is history. He won the Junior championship after back-to-back playoff matches against Parker Zhano and tournament favorite Ray Robson, earning Shankland a spot in the 2011 U.S. Championship and another commitment that became too good to refuse.

The youngster performed admirably in the 2011 national title fight, edging veteran GM Alexander Onischuk in a playoff to reach the four-player quad finals. There, Shankland ran into eventual champion GM Gata Kamsky, who topped him 1.5-.5 - though after his defeat, Shankland remained upbeat. He finished third place, and described his performance as his “dream tournament for the year."

Sam enters the 2015 U.S. Championship at the ever-climbing peak of his career. A strong showing at the 2014 Qatar Masters Open was topped by an undefeated run at the 2014 Tromso Chess Olympiad, where he entered as the fifth-board reserve but went on to win an Olympic gold medal. He made his first break into the world’s top 100 players at the end of 2014, then opened up 2015 with another undefeated performance in the Tata Steel Challengers section for third place. He has now remained unbeaten in over 65 games.

Due to his incredible recent performances, spectators should keep a close eye on this young player who may just ride his wave of confidence to a victory in the 2015 U.S. Chess Championship.

Blindfold exhibitionist Grandmaster Timur Gareev, originally from Uzbekistan, is a formidable opponent with unlimited potential and the proven ability to make a serious run at the U.S. Championship title. A veteran of the game, Timur’s standard rating has remained active and comfortably above 2500 for more than a decade.

"My grandfather taught me how to play chess at the age of four," Gareev said. "I practiced the game regularly challenging my father, friends and schoolmates. At the age of eight, I played my first rated competition. I started succeeding in my improvement very fast, winning most of the national events."

At 10, Gareev was playing expert level strength and dedicating 4-6 hours every day, working with his coach Georgi Borisenko and mastering the game on his own. By 2004, at 16, he earned the distinction as the youngest-ever Grandmaster from Asia, then traveled to the U.S. in 2005 to help the University of Texas at Brownsville win its first national championship. After receiving his B.A. degree in 2011, Gareev was awarded the Samford Fellowship in 2012, which awarded him a monetary stipend to assist his chess development.

Timur has conducted 19-board, 27-board, and 33-board blindfold simultaneous exhibitions - the last of which he served up a score of 29-0-4 against members of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, days before the start of the 2013. U.S. Championship. His exceptional memory allows for top-tier preparation and study, and he has good chances of catching an unsuspecting opponent in deeply analyzed lines. He believes that blindfold training has helped him improve his focus.

Samuel Sevian is the 2015 U.S. Chess Championship Wildcard and an American chess prodigy. He set previous records as the youngest American Expert and the youngest American National Master in history, and currently stands as the youngest American International Master in history. Last November, he continued his record-setting climb by becoming the youngest American Grandmaster in history, earning the coveted title at 13 years, 10 months and 27 days -- and also the sixth-youngest GM in world history.

Sevian has maintained his status as one of the most-promising Juniors in the country, fully realized since he became a U12 World Champion in Maribor Slovenia in November 2012. He is a product of the Young Stars - Team USA program, a joint partnership between the Kasparov Chess Federation (KCF) and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis to find and train the country's top emerging chess players. Sam received intensive training with legendary World Champion GM Garry Kasparov, which he said was a big contributing factor to his recent success.

"The KCF helped me enormously," Sam said. "First, it was Garry's camps held in Saint Louis and New York where we got to train with the Champion himself, and of course long and frequent training sessions with GM Alexander Chernin, who helped me grow."