Player Bios

Robert Hess is a former U.S. Junior Champion, the 2010 Samford Award winner, the runner-up at the 2009 U.S. Championship, and a three-time member of the U.S. National team. After graduating with a degree in History from Yale University in 2015, he has continued to be involved with chess. He is a known chess analyst and commentator and was the coach of the U.S. Women's team at the 2016 Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan. Outside of chess, Hess serves as Chief Operating Officer of The Sports Quotient, a statistically-based sports site he co-founded.

Alejandro Ramirez has become a frequent face the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, through roles as both the Club’s Resident Grandmaster and as a player in the nation’s elite events. He currently serves as the chess coach for Saint Louis University and is recruiting its inaugural team to start play in Fall of 2016. He became FIDE Master at the age of 9, an International Master at 13, and earned his Grandmaster title by the age of 15. That achievement set Ramirez as the first Centro-American to earn the elite title and, at the time, the second youngest grandmaster. A competitor in the last three U.S. Championships, Ramirez displayed some of his finest chess in May 2013, when he pushed reigning champion Gata Kamsky to a playoff for the national title. He drew the first two playoff games with Kamsky before losing an Armageddon game where he had 19 minutes and 45 seconds against Kamsky's 45 minutes.

Akshat is a 17-year-old Grandmaster who recorded one of the fastest rises in the history of chess when he went from a starting rating of 1548 to a Grandmaster rating of 2500 in under 5 ½ years. He started playing chess at the age of 9 ½ years. Akshat was the 2015 US Junior Chess Champion, as well as the National High School Chess Champion and the National High School Blitz Champion. Since the age of 14, Akshat has remained the highest ranked Junior Rapid Chess player in the country. In August 2016, Akshat moved with his family to Saint Louis to pursue Chess professionally. More can be learned about him from his blog QuestToGM.com, which chronicles his journey from an amateur to a Grandmaster.

Grandmaster Ben Finegold learned the rules of chess at age 5 and received his first USCF rating at age 6. GM Finegold's first major tournament win came in 1989 when he finished in a tie for first-place at the U.S. Junior Closed Championship. Also in 1989, Finegold scored his biggest victory to date with a win against Boris Gelfand at the Euwe Memorial tournament in Amsterdam, Holland. He obtained his first IM norm at the event, gained 40 FIDE points and eventually earned the title of International Master in 1990. In 1991, Finegold won his first major international, Swiss-paired tournament in Antwerp, Belgium. From 1988 to 1992, Finegold lived in Brussels, Belgium. He returned to the U.S. in 1992 and, in 1993, he was awarded the Samford Chess Fellowship. In 1994, Finegold finished in a six-way tie for first place at the U.S Open in Chicago, and then in 2002 he finished in a first-place tie with eight players at the World Open in Philadelphia where he secured his first GM norm. He won the Chicago Spring Invitational in 2005 to earn his second GM norm, and then achieved his third GM norm at the 2009 Spice Cup Chess Festival in Lubbock, Texas.