Chess Where I lived - Ep. 5: USA. Dreams, Diversity, And Cold War

Hello everyone!

To the sadness of a few and the joy of many... oops, I mean... well, whatever. Welcome to the last episode of the series "Chess Where I Lived". The country of today is the United States of America, popularly known as the USA. For those who don't know, I lived there for about three months during the northern hemisphere summer of last year, more precisely in the city of Atlanta, GA, where one of the biggest and busiest airports in the world is located. This fact cannot be found in the text I wrote about myself a few months ago, so for those who are reading it now, be happy that you have some privileged information.

As always, I will begin by saying that my own opinions do not necessarily represent the country as a whole, nor the impression of every American citizen or resident. The idea is just to let you know my general feelings about the game's popularity while living there, not to make a deep neutral analysis with statistics and concrete facts, although I will of course bring some to support my point of view.

For the last time let me explain how the texts are structured because I never know whether someone will read this as the first one. Initially, I introduce some famous players of the country, who have made a name for themselves in the history of national and world chess, giving a summary of their lives and careers. In conclusion, I give my perspective on chess there, such as its popularity, how it's perceived by people, and predictions for the future. The text is divided into:

• A historical player
• The GOAT
• My favorite
• A curious fact
• My personal perspective

If you don't wanna be an American Idiot, come learn with me! (Just a reference to a song, don't be offended, please).

1)      A historical player: Paul Morphy

Paul Charles Morphy, born in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 22, 1837, is one of the most enigmatic and legendary players in chess history. During his brief career in the late 1850s, Morphy was recognized as the world's greatest chess master. One of his most famous games was the Opera Game, which he played against Duke Karl II of Brunswick and the French Count Isouard de Vauvenargues.

A child prodigy, the nine-year-old Morphy was considered one of the best players in New Orleans by 1846. Against Eugène Rousseau, one of Morphy's strongest opponents during this period, he played at least fifty games, winning more than thirty and losing no more than five.

In 1857 he received an invitation to participate in the First American Chess Congress in New York. The German master Louis Paulsen, already aware of Morphy's talent, openly predicted that the young American would be the winner of the tournament. This prediction proved to be correct, as Morphy won every match by a wide margin, even defeating Paulsen himself in the final. After his victory, Morphy was immediately hailed as the chess champion of the United States. In regular games, his overall record at the time was 87 wins, 8 draws, and 5 losses.

He then traveled to Europe and challenged the continent's top players. Until this time, Morphy was not well known or highly regarded there, despite his dominance of the American chess scene. He played many of the strongest European players of his time, such as Daniel Harrwitz, Henry Bird, and Johann Löwenthal, and defeated them all by large margins. Morphy made numerous attempts to arrange a match with Howard Staunton, but none ever materialized. 

The match between him and the unofficial German World Champion Adolf Anderssen took place between December 20, 1858, and December 28, 1858. Morphy triumphed easily with a score of 7-2-2 and was generally hailed also by the Europeans as the World Chess Champion. When asked about his defeat, Anderssen stated that in his opinion Morphy was the strongest player ever to play the game.

He returned to the United States in 1859 before finally giving up competitive chess and retiring from public life. Paul Morphy died in his hometown on July 10, 1884, at the age of 47.

2)      The GOAT: Bobby Fischer

Robert “Bobby” James Fischer, born on March 9, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois, is not only the GOAT of the USA, but for many, of the whole world. His unmatched talent combined with great dedication is the perfect recipe for being celebrated as a true genius by chess fans worldwide. Estimates suggest that Fischer's ELO rating at his peak was more than 100 points above the second-best player at the time.

Also considered a prodigy, he won his first U.S. Championship in 1957 at the age of 14. In 1964, he scored an impressive 11-0 in the same competition, the only perfect record in its history. Fischer was crowned American Champion eight times, a record that has yet to be broken. His most brilliant game ever was against Donald Byrne in 1956, which is called the "Game of the Century".

In 1959, at the age of 16, Fischer qualified for his first Candidates tournament, finishing fifth. In Stockholm 1962, he became the first non-Soviet player to win an Interzonal since FIDE introduced the tournament in 1948, qualifying for the Candidates again in Curaçao, where he was the overwhelming favorite.

However, Fischer only finished fourth, later accusing the top three Soviet players (Petrosian, Keres, and Efim Geller) of having agreed in advance to draw their games quickly against each other in order to conserve their energy for playing him. This accusation is widely believed to be true and caused FIDE to change the Candidates to a match-knockout format.

Having declined to play in the 1966 and 1969 World Championship cycles, he played a memorable Candidates tournament in 1972, sweeping Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6-0 scores. After defeating Tigran Petrosian, Fischer finally won the title match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. Billed as a Cold War confrontation between the USA and the USSR, the match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since. 

After that, Fischer did not play a competitive game in public for almost 20 years. He refused to defend his title in 1975 against Anatoly Karpov after FIDE did not accept some of his conditions for the match, thus forfeiting his crown. In his later life, Fischer lived in the Philippines, Japan, and Iceland, where he died on January 17, 2008, at the age of 64.

3)      My favorite: Fabiano Caruana

Born on July 30, 1992, in Miami, Florida, Fabiano Luigi Caruana is the strongest American Grandmaster as of April 2024 and the reigning three-time national chess champion (2016, 2022, and 2023). His peak rating of 2844 is the third highest in history. Caruana won the team gold medal representing the United States on board one at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, as well as an individual bronze medal in the same competition.

He played for the United States until 2005 when he transferred his national affiliation to Italy. There he earned his Grandmaster title in 2007 at the age of 14, and that same year won his first Italian Chess Championship, a feat he repeated in 2008, 2010, and 2011. In 2014, Caruana won the prestigious Sinquefield Cup in what is considered by many to be the best performance by any player in a tournament in the history of chess. He scored an incredible 3098 performance rating, the highest in history at the elite level.

After transferring his affiliation back to the United States in 2015, he won the 2018 Candidates Tournament, becoming the first American challenger for the World Championship since Bobby Fischer in 1972. Caruana lost the match to Magnus Carlsen in rapid tiebreak after drawing all twelve classic games. He has also participated in the 2016, 2020, 2022, and is currently playing in the 2024 Candidates Tournament.

His playing style is universal, based on strong opening preparation and calculation. Caruana has even been hailed by Magnus Carlsen as a player who is ahead of most of his contemporaries in these two aspects of the game.

There are several reasons why he is my favorite American player. The most obvious is the excellent level of chess he plays, always well prepared and extremely solid. The worst version of Caruana is still better than the vast majority of average GMs.

Besides, after the 2018 World Championship match, I became a fan of him as a person, at least up to where it is possible to know about his personality. In the matches Carlsen vs. Nepomniachtchi in 2021 and Ding vs. Nepomniachtchi in 2023 he commented for the live stream of chess.com, always with a very good sense of humor mixed with an incredible understanding and explanations of the games being played.

4)      A curious fact: The diversity of American chess, a true ethnic mix on the board.

Well, this fact is not exactly new or curious to most of my readers, but nevertheless, I feel the need to mention what in my opinion is the most striking and strongest feature of American chess, which explains its huge number of high-level players, even having seven of them above or very close to 2700 ELO.

Besides, this characteristic is not only valid for chess, but actually for American society in general, and is also one of the multiple factors that explain the great geopolitical power they have become. I am talking about the diversity and mixture of different origins among its citizens and consequently among its chess grandmasters, which provides not only a greater number of talents but above all, different approaches and ways of looking at the game.

Some were born outside the USA and moved there with their families when they were very young. Others were born in the United States but come from another country, like the aforementioned Fabiano Caruana (Italy). And finally, there are those who moved to America and began representing the country strictly for professional reasons. In the picture above, I have chosen some of them who represent it very well:

Levon Aronian (Armenia), who left his home country to train in the USA after being told that he was no longer at the top of his game; Leinier Domínguez Pérez (Cuba), a player consistently ranked in the top 20 in the world; Abhimanyu Mishra (India), the youngest player ever to earn the Grandmaster title; Hikaru Nakamura (Japan), currently ranked third in the world and a famous streamer; Daniel Naroditsky (Ukraine), one of the best blitz and bullet online players, but obviously also a very strong GM over the board; Hans Niemann (Denmark), a young talent known for his polemics about cheating, but who undoubtedly has great skills; Wesley So (Philippines), another one who has been a super elite player for the last ten years; and Jeffery Xiong (China), a former prodigy with a lot of potential who has not yet exploded.

Surely all of them contribute to raising the average national level of chess, not only by playing, but also by inspiring other youngsters of similar backgrounds to see that they can get there with dedication and perseverance.

5)      My personal perspective

Although my time in the USA was not the longest, it was enough to understand a few things. First of all, I think it is unnecessary to say that chess is obviously still behind the most popular sports in the country like basketball or American football, and this is probably true for basically every country in the world, maybe only except for some former Soviet republics.

Nevertheless, like many other sports, chess is taken seriously by the federation, and I see that the promising players have great opportunities to play and develop in the USA, which is perhaps the only Western country outside of Europe where it is possible to become an elite player. Although telling your parents that you want to become a chess grandmaster is probably not the most natural thing to do, I believe that it is also not seen as completely absurd, as it is here where I live.

As far as popularity is concerned, even though Atlanta is not the main center, it was one of the few places where I could see people playing chess on the streets for fun, the famous "hustlers", which are very common, especially in New York, but also show up in other famous cities. This kind of thing is extremely rare in New Zealand, Germany, Brazil or Spain. The experience of playing short uncompromising games against unknown people on the street was very different and fun for me.

According to the Federation's latest study, about 70 million Americans, almost 25% of the population, are interested in chess. Between 25-30 million of them are active players who practice regularly, either over the board or online. Moreover, if you can show your talent at a young age, you have a good chance of getting the right encouragement and support to develop and represent the country at a later age. 

Therefore, if I were a talented child with bold goals in the chess world and had to choose between one of the five countries where I have already lived to grow up, the USA would probably be my choice. Although it is not located in Europe, where the center of high-level chess is played, it still seems to offer the best conditions for those who wish to pursue a career in this beautiful game.

Postscript:

[If you read the other texts in this series, it was probably easy to imagine that the piece I would use to represent the last country would be the pawn. I think the connection is quite obvious. By choosing the pawn, I am referring to the famous "American Dream", a path taken by many people from less developed countries, hoping to find better living conditions for themselves and their families in the USA, like some of the players mentioned.

Usually, they work in less prestigious jobs, but they are still indispensable, just like the pawns in a chess game. Many of them will not succeed and will be "captured" by life's struggles before reaching their goal, but there are also many who will get there and finally have their deserved and dreamed "promotion", becoming stronger than they ever imagined].