NYC Corporate Chess League Returns as Deutsche Bank Prevails in Mega Summer Knock-Out Championships

After a nearly four-year hiatus during the pandemic, the NYCCL returned in full swing for a one-day, summer knockout extravaganza. Among a record-breaking turnout, Deutsche Bank regained their crown, followed by a strong performance from Google which unseated returning champion and favorites Goldman Sachs. 

A new corporate chess leader was crowned at the thrilling NYC Corporate Chess League (NYCCL) summer championships held on June 8, 2023. Since the prior season was held in the fall of 2019, the NYCCL returned, this time with a new format for a single-evening knock-out championship event. Chess players and spectators alike were eager to reconvene in person. Despite a nearly four-year break, the invitation-only summer event broke all prior records: We had 20 teams enter, featuring 16 titled players (many of whom resurfaced from semi-retirement), with over 150 spectators from across 50+ firms or corporations, including banks, asset managers, consulting and law firms, tech companies, and more, all with offices in New York City. Three-player (plus alternates) teams battled it out to survive the winner-take-all single-round elimination bracket.

We were delighted to welcome back teams from Blackstone, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Google, JPMorgan Chase, RBC Capital Markets, and Two Sigma. Making their first NYCCL appearance were chess teams from BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Chess.com, Ernst & Young (EY), HSBC, Jump Trading LLC, McKinsey & Co., SMBC Group, Société Générale, and Ramp. 

Despite the unfortunate timing of the wildfire smoke infiltrating NYC and the east coast that day, players and guests were comfortably situated indoors at the beautiful new Hudson Yards offices of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, which again hosted the event. The Debevoise conference and catering staff went above and beyond to welcome all players and guests and put on a corporate reception that doubled as a world-class chess tournament. 

The event was in the works for three months, spanning from selecting a date and space, formulating the guest and registration lists, and reaching out to old and new teams to finalize their rosters and go over tournament logistics. My fearless co-organizer, Alexandra (“Alex”) Wiener of Apollo Global Management, was the brains behind the tournament format allowing all interested and qualifying teams to compete in the ultimate 16-team knock-out following a preliminary, seeding round. 

Whereas in prior years the prolonged league format facilitated double matches of rapid G 10+3’ spanning several months, the single-evening timing this year necessitated a shorter blitz time control of 5+2’ (increment). The tournament was again unrated, and deemed as a corporate social outing first, and a chess team-building tournament second. The timing of the event this year allowed teams for the first time to open up their rosters to summer interns and associates, which livened up the atmosphere. 

Goldman Sachs, formerly captained by Alex and now by Sarah Ascherman, returned as the defending 2019 NYCCL league champions. Goldman was again the favorite with two International Masters on its top two boards: IM Zhe Quan and IM Bogdan Vioreanu. 

The winners of the initial 2018 season, Deutsche Bank, again featured its solid lineup of FM Igor Shneider and WIM Elina Cotler (née Groberman). Deutsche Bank has since lost one of its star players, former U.S. Women’s Champion IM Rusudan (“Rusa”) Goletiani. Rusa was now leading the BlackRock team and credited the NYCCL with serving as the motivation for starting an internal chess club that quickly gained numerous eager members. 

In addition to co-organizing the NYCCL, I was again competing as board 1 for the Debevoise team and serving as team captain. Debevoise gained a titled player on board 2, WGM Anya Allen (née Corke), who recently joined the firm as a new litigation associate. Rounding out our team was Columbia Law student and summer associate, Benjamin Oh, who ended up undefeated in the matches played, and first alternate and senior litigation associate, Romain Zamour. 

Chess has the power to connect individuals across differences. Even beyond age, gender, and race, where else can you find a summer intern on an equal playing field with a Managing Director or Partner, or find software engineers and data scientists sitting across from lawyers, all engaged in a common, intellectual pursuit? Our vision for the NYCCL was to foster a community of like-minded professionals and use chess as a tool to collaborate internally and across industries. On realizing our most successful event yet, Alex adds, “We aim to bring chess out of backrooms and predominantly online forums and into the boardroom, giving everyone from summer analyst to CEO and beginner to internationally ranked grandmaster a place to come together, in-person over one of the world’s oldest and most popular games.” 

We are proud to be a female-founded and managed sports league. Despite chess and many of the fields represented still being drastically male-dominated, we were thrilled to continue the trend of strong female players and professionals leading their corporate chess teams on top boards and in the captain's capacity.

Alex worked alongside her fiancé, chess master and Barclays Vice President Richard (Rich) Tuhrim, as acting and volunteer tournament directors. 

They kept everything running extraordinarily smoothly—running through the event rules, helping teams toss for colors, keeping the excited crowds under control during critical game moments, updating the popular bracket scorecard, and overseeing the crowd-pleasing Armageddon tie-breaker between Deutsche Bank and Two Sigma in the round of 8. 

Alas, DB’s FM Igor Shneider forced a draw with black in a Rook + Bishop ending. As Black gets draw odds, Deutsche Bank won the critical match.

Following an upset in the qualifying round, McKinsey advanced to the full knock-out bracket, where they were paired against the top-ranking Debevoise home team. 

Debevoise prevailed 3-0 against McKinsey, with help from a memorable back-rank checkmate on my board one game. 

The blitz time control and corporate pride on the line created exciting games and surprising turns of events. 

The stakes intensified by the semi-finals. Goldman and Google advanced in the East division, with Deutsche Bank and the new Chess.com teams facing off in the West division. No doubt, there was pressure on Chess.com to live up to its namesake and make a strong showing at a chess event. The team, led by National Master Anthony Levin, had knocked out the BlackRock team to make it to the semis. 

As many of the corporate attendees are avid Chess.com users, they were excited to meet a few of the faces behind the scenes of Chess.com at an in-person event, creating a meta scenario. 

Google’s board 1, captain NM Kola Adeyemi, continued to steamroll the competition. After sidestepping a draw by repetition in a nail-biter game down to the last seconds against Debevoise, Kola scored a major upset by defeating IM Zhe Quan of Goldman. On the other side, Deutsche Bank continued its momentum to progress to the finals. While Deutsche Bank and Google were duking it out for first, a tiebreaker match for third place was held between Goldman and Chess.com.

Goldman bounced back to continue its overall podium finish streak by placing a respectable third.

Kola was not to be stopped as he defeated FM Igor Shneider in the finals, but DB boards 2 and 3 came through to win the overall match. Congratulations to the Deutsche Bank team, which reclaimed its title as the NYCCL corporate leader since winning the initial 2018 season.

As the NYCCL also rewards top individual performers, both Igor and Kola were recognized with the MVP (awarded to the player on the winning team) and the new Creative Stand-Out distinctions, respectively. 

After multiple rounds of fighting chess, and breaking bread over heavy hors’ d'oeuvres and good wine, we noticed numerous new connections among industries being formed. Everyone left in good spirits and eager for more chess. We appreciated the feedback we received from participants on the event being taken to another level. In addition to the top players and team captains already mentioned, we would like to thank the following captains for rallying their teams and running point internally: NM Asuka Nakamura (JPMC), NM Sameer Mujumdar (EY) Igor Sobolev (SMBC Group) Paul Schepel (SocGen), Philippe Suter (TwoSigma), Eric Dong (BNY Mellon), Kevin He (RBC) Gabe Kauffman (Ramp), Andrey Krasnov & Vladimir Gramagin (Jump Trading), NM Kevin Cao (HSBC).

The NYCCL depends on a team-captain model, in which captains serve as the main point of contact. They are responsible for rallying their teams, formulating their rosters, gathering internal approvals to compete as a team, and passing on key information to their players. We also appreciate appearances by our guest Grandmasters: Robin van Kampen (Caption Partners) and Nico Checa (Yale), who took time out of their busy schedules to attend and pass on their game assessments to the spectators. All GM appearances, chess board set-up and clean-up, and tournament directing are done on a voluntary basis in support of building our corporate chess community.

Noemi DeOleo as always, took professional quality photographs during the event, many of which are printed here. Thank you also to corporate staff attorney Aleksei Romanovski for additional photographs and for supporting the Debevoise chess team. 

The NYCCL Summer knock-out event would not have been possible without the top-notch Debevoise conference, catering, facilities, mailroom, and marketing staff running point on all the details and behind-the-scenes logistics that put this event over the top: Handling back-end registrations, room configuration, catering orders and set-up, and printing guest name tags and event signage, among other fine touches. Special thanks to Pauline Ford, Keisha Sinclair, Javier Raymondi, and Claudio Beckford for making everything come together for an outside-the-box event.

About the New York City Corporate Chess League (NYCCL)

The NYCCL brings together chess players employed at various firms and corporations with offices in New York City. The league is comprised of three-player teams and alternates. Games are not rated, although players’ reported USCF, FIDE, and/or Chess.com peak ratings are used for pairing purposes.

All players participate in their personal capacity, and must all be employed by the same private entity and approved internally to compete as a team and be featured in event PR. Membership and attendance are free but are currently by invitation only. Prizes are currently limited to custom trophies and corporate swag and giveaways.

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP was the host of the 2018 and 2019 seasons and the 2023 summer knock-out championships.

For more information, including future team submissions and sponsorship opportunities, contact Alisa Melekhina and Alexandra Wiener on LinkedIn. 

*FM Alisa Melekhina is a World Team Championship gold medalist and long-time competitor in U.S. Open tournaments and women’s national and world team invitational events. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in May 2014 and is currently practicing as a senior corporate litigation attorney in NYC, focusing on eDiscovery across white-collar investigations and complex commercial litigation. Alisa also participated in the Chess.com 2023 Women’s Roundtable.