Bughouse, Blindfold, and More at National Squash League Collaboration

When US Chess Vice President John D. Rockefeller V reached out to me to help organize a chess exhibition at a National Squash League (NSL) event, I knew right away I was all in. I used to organize tennis outings at U.S. Opens during my time at US Chess, and, of course, other chess hybrids like chess boxing have become very popular. US Chess was even organizing an exhibition with USA Fencing until COVID put the kibosh on that. 

Rockefeller’s son John is an accomplished squash player who lost a tough match this past spring to Timmy Brownell, the highest-ranked American player ever at world-number 23. Rockefeller was intrigued, when listening to Brownell’s episode on the Squash University Podcast, to hear Brownell draw a comparison between the current state of squash and the state of chess (roughly from 21:00-27:00)!

Rockefeller recaps the situation like this: “[Brownell] is frustrated that squash has become as positional as chess has become (or at least used to be before players started making sub-optimal moves [in the opening] to get out of theory), and he co-founded the National Squash League (NSL) in 2023 to encourage dynamic play. NSL squash is akin to bughouse in that it's a variant — with many of the variations inspired by hockey: team play (six players per team), substitutions, power plays, and [wins determined by] total points during a set amount of time.”

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Timmy Brownell (L) and Ethan Sheehan. (All photos by Dan Lucas)

Hearing this podcast episode, Rockefeller reached out to Brownell and proposed a collaboration between NSL & US Chess — along the lines of US Chess's recent collaboration with US Squash. The NSL co-founders met with US Chess Executive Director Fred Abouseleman, Deputy Executive Director Jacques DeMoss, and Rockefeller, and NSL’s enthusiasm was evident: Brownell proposed chess exhibitions at all 16 NSL matches in the 2026-2027 season. 

US Chess suggested an experiment with one match, first. NSL selected the October 24 match between the Carolina Pirates (featuring Brownell, catch a clip of him in action) and the Atlanta Tornados at Atlanta Community Squash. 

This is where I came in as a former US Chess employee who lives in Metro Atlanta. Working from the September Top 100 lists, I invited a number of Georgia’s leading young players to participate and these players accepted:

• Abigail Gao: Georgia’s top-ranked eight-year-old girl
• Reethu Balla: Georgia’s third-ranked eight-year-old girl
• Alexander Joseph: Georgia’s top-ranked 10-year-old, and at 2100 the U.S.’ seventh-ranked 10-year-old
• Ethan Sheehan: The current Georgia State Champion, and the fourth-ranked 18-year-old in the U.S. Ethan also made a lot of noise this summer when he won a blitz game against Nakamura — and four more against other GMs — at the Naroditsky Memorial. 

We had the young players playing blitz against the squash pros. Brownell offered the strongest resistance (he is roughly 1400 on Chess.com). Most of the squash players were beginning-level chess players, but they all had the competitive fire of elite athletes, despite the diminutive size of their youthful opponents. 

When the competition transitioned to bughouse, the event really came alive. The NSL format is considered a variant of squash in much the same way that bughouse is a chess variant. The squash pros were happy to be getting real-time advice during these games from their experienced partners.

But what really blew minds was Sheehan’s three-board blindfold simul (an idea that US Chess Marketing and Communications Manager Bryan Tillis proposed for this event; see Tillis’ “One Move at a Time” podcast interview with Sheehan here). Many spectators simply couldn’t believe what they were seeing. 

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Georgia state champion Ethan Sheehan with Dan Lucas.

Adding to the amazement was the fact that, as the squash matches were soon to start, noisemakers of various sorts were being handed out to the squash fans, who used them with great enthusiasm directly around Sheehan. But Sheehan was not bothered in the slightest by what should have been a major distraction! Unfortunately, we ran out of time deep in the middlegames and had to end the blindfold part before the games could finish, but Sheehan was already winning on two of the boards.

An indication of the connections made was the impromptu squash lesson that occurred when Brownell took Sheehan and Joseph on to the court less than an hour before Brownell had to take the court himself for the season-opening match. Imagine GM Fabiano Caruana teaching two beginners how to play chess one hour before the first round of the U.S. Championship, and you can begin to understand how unusual this was and what a natural teacher and promoter Brownell is.

This chess exhibition was a resounding success, so hopefully these events will be a regular part of future NSL matches. Many people were either introduced to chess or simply saw chess through new eyes. Spencer Lovejoy is the CEO of the NSL, and the co-founder along with Timmy Brownell. He related, “Every time I passed by the [chess] tables, it looked like everyone was having a blast. It was great to see the pro players mixing with the juniors.”