The Field

Xiong is the third-youngest grandmaster in the US (after Awonder Liang and Samuel Sevian), having been awarded the GM title in September 2015 at age fourteen. Grandmaster Xiong won the 2016 U.S. Closed Junior Championship, and is currently the highest rated player in the U.S. under the age of eighteen. He is rated 2640 FIDE (URS 2622) making him the ninth highest rated player in the country.

This eighteen-year old from Coppell, Texas has a quite an impressive list of results.  Showing a tenacity beyond his years he has won the 2015 Chicago Open, finished sixth in the 2016 U.S.Championship (the strongest in history), and was awarded the 2016 U.S. Outstanding Player Achievement Award by USCF.  

Grandmaster Rustam Kasimdzhanov was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (In 1979  it was still a part of the Soviet Union). He began to play chess very early, earning his Grandmaster at 18, and soon after won the Asian Continental Championship. In 2002, he reached the final of the World Cup (held in Hyderabad, India), losing to Vishy Anand. In 2004, somewhat sensationally, he won the World Championship in Tripoli.  Kasimdzhanov unexpectedly made his way through to the final, winning mini-matches against Alejandro Ramírez, Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Vassily Ivanchuk, Zoltán Almási, Alexander Grischuk and Veselin Topalov to meet Michael Adams to play for the title and the right to face world number one Garry Kasparov in a match. In the final six-game match of the Championship, both players won two games, making a tie-break of rapid games necessary. Kasimdzhanov won the first game with black, after having been in a difficult position. By drawing the second game he became the new FIDE champion.

Kasimdzhanov has played in 12 Olympiads for Uzbekistan, the first one in 1996. In 2010 Kasimdzhanov won the gold medal at the Asian Games in Guangzhou.

Kasimdzhanov started coaching in 2008, helping Anand in his match against Kramnik. In 2011, he was a coach of the German national team, which won the European team Championship. He worked with Karjakin at the Candidates 2014, and started coaching Fabiano Caruana in 2015.  Coaching Caruana is now Kasimdzhanov’s main occupation. Kasimdzhanov is married with 2 children; they live in Germany, in a small rural area not far from Bonn, the former capital of Germany.

Armenian born American Grandmaster Akobian earned his Grandmaster status at the age of 20.  He was the US Junior Champion in 2003, the winner of World Open in 2002, 2004, and 2007, and helped the US win the Silver Medal at the 2009 World Team Championship.G

Var’s childhood in Mongolia had such harsh winters that his father forbade him and his sister Armine from playing outside.  He taught them chess, which fascinated the young Akobian. “From the very beginning,” Var says, “I was different from the other chess kids.  It was never just a game for me. I always wanted to be a Grandmaster, and knew that I would do what it takes.” As a teenager living in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia,  Akobian spent his days on chess and soccer. His teachers encouraged him to focus on chess, so much that Var says: “If I went to high school in here [in the U.S], I never could have spent so much energy on chess.”

In 2002, a year after immigrating to the U.S., he earned the Samford Chess Fellowship.  The Fellowship grant, which allowed the young Var to study and improve his chess, yielded quick results with a tie for first at the 2002 World Open and First Place at the Irme Koenig GM invitational.  The following year, he won the 2003 U.S. Junior Closed Championship, earned his GM Norms in June 2004, and then won the World Open for a second time.

An excellent positional player, GM Akobian admires the games and style of Armenian Hero, former World Champion Tigran Petrosian.  He admires him so much so that he became an expert in the French Defense, one of Petrosian’s most played openings with the black pieces. Var offers this advice for aspiring club players: “Don’t expect to see constant improvement. You build knowledge and work hard, and after a while you’ll see a big breakthrough.”

In 2007, Akobian was featured on MTV's True Life documentary series, in an episode titled "I'm a Genius".

Grandmaster Aryan Tari is a 19 year old from Norway who started playing chess at the age of 5. He won the Junior section of the Norwegian Chess Championship in 2012 qualifying him for the championship section.  He placed 8th in 2013, 2nd in 2014, and Grandmaster Tari won the 2015 Norwegian Chess Championship. He became GM at 16. In 2017, he became World Champion U20 and has represented Norway in Olympiads in Baku and Batumi. At the

European Individual Chess Championship, May 12–23, 2016, Grandmaster Tari qualified to participate in the Chess World Cup 2017 in Tibilis.

Grandmaster Mista started playing chess at the age of 4 and earned Grandmaster status at the age of 20.  Mista has taken 3rd place in Polish Championship (2009), won the Hastings Chess Congress (2015/16) and Najdorf Memorial (2018, Warsaw). In years 2011-12, Mista was the Coach of Women National Team during Chess Olympiad (2012 Istanbul) and Team European Chess Championship (2011, Greece) where the team won silver.  Mista is a member of Polish National Team since 2011, in chess problem solving, and has won 8 gold medals in a row in Team World Chess Problem Championships. Mista is currently the manager of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Chess Program.

Grandmaster Andrey Baryshpolets is from Kyiv, Ukraine. GM Baryshpolets obtained his title as Grandmaster in 2013.  His most significant chess achievements are: the Ukrainian champion under 18 in 2008, winner of Lone Star Open 2018, Winter Chess Classic-B 2017, Golden State Open 2017, Delhi Open 2015, co-winner of Southwest Open 2018, prize-winner of Benasque 2016, and A.Margaryan memorial 2013. He is pursuing a PhD degree in Agricultural & Applied Economics at Texas Tech University. As the member of TTU chess team, Andrey became the Pan-American Intercollegiate champion in 2015, 2 time Southwest Collegiate champion (2017-2018) and 3 time qualifier for the Final Four (2016-2018).

Grandmaster Bai was born in Jilin, China in 1999. He started learning chess at the age of 5 and, at nine years old, he joined the Chinese national youth team and won WYCC U10 title in the following year. Bai earned 3 GM norms from three consecutive tournaments in December 2014 and achieved his GM title at the age of 15. One year after, he won the Chinese individual group B championship, the third place in 2016 and second place in 2018 of group A. He also won many open tournaments worldwide such as Cannes Open, Zadar Open, Groningen Open, and North American Open, etc. His current rating is 2572.

Denis Kadric is a Bosnian grandmaster who currently lives in the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. Denis learned how to play chess when he was 5 years old, taught by his father, and played his first tournament when he was 9 years old. In 2012, he became the European Rapid and Blitz champion in the U-16 category. From 2014 till 2018, he attended the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) where he received a full ride scholarship and got his bachelor’s degree in Finance. In 2017, he won 2 strong international tournaments in a row. The first was the Bosna Open 2017 in June, followed by the Paracin Open (Serbia) in July. He has played in the last 4 Olympiads for his country and on his first Olympiad (Istanbul 2012), he made his final GM norm. In the last Olympiad (Batumi 2018), he played on the first board. Currently, he is a professional chess player and coach.

Grandmaster Kaidanov was born in Berdychiv, Ukrainian SSR, USSR. In 1960, he moved to Kaliningrad, Russian. He learned chess from his father when he was 6 years of age. Kaidanov was a member of US national team in 6 World Chess Olympiads and 3 World Team Championships, winning team Gold (Lucerne, Switzerland 1993), Silver (Lucerne,1997 and Elista, Russia, 1998)  and Bronze (Erevan, Armenia 1996). He also won an individual Gold medal in Lucerne 1997 and individual Silver medal in Calvia, Spain in 2004.

Gregory won more than 30 international chess tournaments, including every major American open (World Open, US Open, National Open, Chicago Open, etc) and the first edition of very prestigious Aeroflot Open in Moscow in 2002. He was inducted into the United States Chess Hall of Fame in 2013. Kaidanov has resided in Lexington, Kentucky since 1991, where he coaches the chess team at Sayre School.