In the Club: Notes from St. Louis

Editor's Note: Chess Life and Chess Life Online Editor John Hartmann made it to St. Louis for the first two rounds of the 2026 U.S. Championships. A true journalist, Hartmann kept a log of each day’s goings-on, which he has allowed to be published on Chess Life Online.

This is a collection of observations, not a complete write-up from Hartmann (you’ll have to wait for the print issue). We’ve grouped his notes into three sections. The first will help you get a feel for the ambiance and atmosphere of the Saint Louis Chess Club (SLCC) before and during the rounds. The second introduces you to some of the many chess fans — from casual observers to life members, locals and travelers — he met at the club. Finally, we’ll meet some of the staff that make SLCC such a unique, complete experience.

A Fly on the Wall

It’s Round 1, and the first player to arrive is GM Abhimanyu Mishra. (The money was on GM Wesley So or GM Irina Krush, according to the arbiters.) It’s So’s birthday, and there are cupcakes in the Sinquefield hospitality room. I noticed IM Alice Lee grab one to take to her board before play started.

The ceremonial bell. (All photos by John Hartmann unless otherwise noted)

As the remaining players wander in, everyone is wanded by IA Chris Bird and NA Kathy Lin. I won’t pretend I didn’t watch to see if GM Hans Niemann got an extra thorough wanding. IM Carissa Yip enters right as Cairns Sinquefield rings the bell; GM Grigory Oparin is also among the last to arrive.

Some players lock in at their boards. Others, like GM Fabiano Caruana and Krush, stroll leisurely around the boards as they wait.

Announcements by IA Brian Yang include a reminder of the time control and a plug for tomorrow night’s open blitz tournament. As it’s National Chess Day, they can all play for free (spoiler: they all elect not to). Dr. Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield rings the bell and we’re off!

Observations from the playing hall:

Foot fidgets – so many feet fidgeting. WGM Jennifer Yu’s left foot, GM Andy Woodward’s right foot, all while IM Rose Atwell and IM Anna Zatonskih are thumping away in a chaotic French Defense.
IM Alice Lee’s shoes are off, she’s sitting criss-cross applesauce. After 41. Rxa4 she gets up and wanders to the snack area. Did she put her shoes back on?
Downstairs, I run into Bill Broich, an old friend from Iowa who now works at the club. He’s an IA and he runs the Wednesday night events and some FIDE rated tournaments. Bill says the word on the street is that Wesley So is smiling a lot, so people think he must be winning around move 27.
I study the Lee – Yip game. There’s now a screen on the side of each table with the current position, which is very helpful! It’s one of Lennart Ootes’s innovations that he started at Tata Steel this year. I’m coming to realize that things in this game are not trivial at all, and the result could go any way. Yip burns time before making her move.
There are no clocks up here, but then, what is time anyway when the rest of world is 10 minutes behind you? (Do you know the future when you go up the stairs? Will this work with lottery tickets or sports betting? The mind does wander.)
Earlier in the analysis room, the consensus was that the Xiong – Sevian game was clearly drawn, but now something has gone wrong for Sevian and he’s resigning. Some kind of triangulation issue?
"How many games are still going,” I’m asked by the security guard at the bottom of the stairs. “Five,” I tell him, and I ask if he gets to go home once all the games are done. Nope. He’s here till close – and that means restaurant close at 11.
So – Shankland is the last game to finish. So is pressing, Shankland is trying to hold. There are only a few of us upstairs at this point, including the arbiters. Shankland might be mumbling to himself as he analyzes? It’s clear that he’s working very hard at the board. So is less strained, but then, he’s probably winning.
Suddenly Shankland resigns after a flurry of moves. He’s quickly out the door; Wesley takes his time. The arbiters congratulate him and wish him a happy birthday. He saunters around the wall, through the remaining halls, and the round is over.
The arbiters – Brian Yang, Chris Bird, Kathy Lin – start to prepare for the next day. New scoresheets, new pens, etc.
I see Kathy stop at the Lee – Yip board and pick up a cupcake. It’s the one Lee grabbed before the round. She was so focused she forgot about her snack.

Back for Round 2, I head upstairs. Wesley is first in the door today at 11:47 a.m., IM Nazi Paikidze soon after. As part of a discussion about Samarkand and its aftermath, I learn that So pays attention to ping times wherever he goes. I don’t know why I never considered that online chess players would pay attention to these things, but they do, and he does. (Samarkand had excellent ping times, by the way.)

The People We Meet

Life Member Alan Anderson stops me on my way out of the play zone, an hour into Round 1. He’s here with the Silman Posse — a group of the late IM Jeremy Silman’s friends and students here to support Gwen Feldman and see Jeremy inducted. He’d like to see an article on fair play and how to run tournaments without cheating. Cell phones are a big worry for people he knows, he told me.

Anderson is a fluent Russian speaker; he spent five years in the Soviet Union. After he returned, his Russian skills were commandeered by IM Danny Rensch during his one month stay in Moscow studying with IM Mark Dvoretsky. Oh to be a fly on that wall.

Coach Nick McCabe (“The Chess Collective”) is celebrating his 25th birthday here for Round 1. Based in Ohio, he is a Chess Life reader; in fact, he jump-startled when I told him what I do. (Reminder to self: it’s pretty amazing to have this job.) He started playing again during the pandemic, and he’s hooked. His girlfriend Katie “knows how the pieces move” but is interesting in learning more.

I tell him there’s commentary around the corner, a tactics session at 5 p.m., and a quad later. He’s thrilled. (Whether his girlfriend is excited is less easy to guess.)

I wander over to the World Chess Hall of Fame to meet up with IM John Donaldson, who is working on the Jerry Spann archives. He’s been here since Tuesday; before that, he was doing commentary in Reno, and before that, he was in Samarkand for three weeks as the captain of the Open U.S. team. We grab lunch at the Lebanese place down the street — John’s vegan. We talked about his Olympiad article and about non-American games that might fit another "uncut gems” feature, and you’ll have to wait to see his suggestion.

Back at the club, I meet Eugene Seibert and his wife Shawn, who have driven in from a Philadelphia suburb for Round 1. This is their anniversary trip; Eugene, a pastor and local chess coach, has wanted to make the trip for years, but Shawn told him this was the year, and that was that. He tells me how excited he was to meet GM Yasser Seirawan at the opening ceremony, and that he invited him out to dinner tonight. Yasser gave him his phone number and told him to text after the round ended to see if it was possible.

A few hours later, on my walk back to the hotel, I see Yasser walking down the street. I ask him if he was going to be able to have dinner with the Sieberts, and he tells me that’s where he’s headed! I follow, cell phone in hand, and snap a photo of a now deliriously happy Larry with Yaz. (Shawn demurred when I asked her to get in the frame.) A fun end to a fun day.

Is there a better anniversary present than a dinner with Yasser Seirawan?

The next morning, I meet Heather, Amelia, and Levi at the chess tables outside the club. They are visiting from Decatur (Heather) and Champaign-Urbana (Amelia and Levi). They were in town for another event, wandered through the Central West End, and stumbled upon the club. Heather plays; Levi is learning. They were very excited to learn that the U.S. Championships are underway, especially as their serious chess nut friend was on her way to meet them!

Passers-by Heather, Amelia, and Levi were drawn in by the chess tables and thrilled to learn the U.S. Championships were underway.

Saturday morning’s rated games are afoot. Players are paired by rating, and there’s a range from expert to the 500s, including Michal Abron, whom we profiled in our May 2020 issue. Andrew Hartmann is playing on board 11. No relation, I checked.

Chess fans get some games in before the start of Round 2.

Players pass through a crowd of fans gathering for hopes of an autograph. Alexander Cargill is thrilled to get Caruana’s signature. He will have driven a total of 5,000 miles (give or take) to get it. Cargill is from Seattle and, as he is changing jobs, he realized he had the time to come here and see the show. Later he tried to get into the blitz but missed entry by a minute. Staff tried to get him in, but no luck. He didn’t care. He got Fabi’s autograph.

Alex Cargill missed the blitz tournament but will drive home with something way cooler than rating points.

Henry Fehler is rated 551 (blitz) but he’s not worried. The lowest rated player in the Saturday Night Blitz, he likes that he can play fast and learn by playing stronger opponents. So far he’s won $16 in his career, but he’s pretty sure he’s winning $45 tonight as he’s the only one in his rating category. There’s no Dad tax imposed; he gets to keep the money and put it in his bank account.

Henry Fehler just wanted to play 1. e4, but this guy took his portrait instead.

I end my day with a concert. Ani Aronian is playing the Blue Strawberry, a small music venue about a 15-minute walk from the Club. The guy working the door is somehow exactly what I expect the owner of a place with this name to look like — aviator glasses, suit with 70s shirt collar — and I end up sitting next to Ani’s husband, Levon.

As I told Levon about 20 minutes in, I was skeptical, but his wife can sing. She does some standards and some originals, and her band is having fun behind her. The sax player has a straight saxophone, something I’ve never seen.

In attendance: Aronian’s second for the event, GM Mikhail Antipov; as well as commentator WGM Katerina Nemcova, Caruana, and arbiter Kathy Lin. Also in attendance are what must be half of the STL Armenian community and the Aronians' four-year-old daughter. She’s not that interested in Mom’s singing; the chicken fingers are a more pressing concern.

It Takes a Village

I meet IA Hendrik du Toit, who is the new technical director at the Club. He’s from South Africa, where he served as the president of Chess South Africa for six years across three stints.

SLCC is a real international affair, with the Dutch jack-of-all-trades Lennart Ootes running multiple behind-the-scenes operations: He runs DGT boards, can handle stream production, and is one of the best chess photographers in the world.

I looked over his shoulder about 20 minutes before the event as he furiously typed away trying to fix his DGT streams. Turns out some changes he made to his process for Samarkand broke some of his SLCC processes, but everything got fixed in time for the show to go on.

The next day we talk about AI and its addictiveness; I show him First Look Chess, my side hustle, and he tells me his latest project “should be done in a month” but of course the projects are never really done, are they? No, Lennart, they’re not. (Claude is humming away on something as I type.)

I meet Penelope: she’s a stray who showed up at SLCC General Manager Joy Bray’s country house stuck in packing tape! After they got her out of her bind, she gobbled up four Churus and fell asleep. It was, as they say, love.

Now she lives at the SLCC. She doesn’t have run of the playing halls, but she can wander the offices as she pleases. Her litterbox is automated and expensive, as befits a lady of her composure.

Penelope has been here for about four months, Lennart Ootes tells me. Everyone seems smitten with her, and she’s very friendly. I tell my daughter, who does not play chess and does not want to play chess, that there’s a cat at the club, and I attach a photo. “Maybe I will come with you on your trip next time!”

About an hour later, Penelope jumps on the chess table I’m typing on, rubbing her face on my computer. My cats at home are gonna be mad.

Towards the end of Round 1, I spend some time talking to GM Denes Boros, who is doing the on-site commentary with WGM Anna Sharevich. He asks if I saw the Krush blunder; only now, when I see the replay on the screens in what used to be the Kingside Diner, do I find out what happened. Ouch. Speaking of the Kingside: The new attached restaurant, the Noble Crown, is excellent, by the way.

I also meet Sharevich. She tells me she does quite a bit of this commentary at the club, working with GM Emilio Cordova in recent weeks for the Sinquefield, and now with Denis. Each time she feels like she grows her chess knowledge by analyzing with another strong player and the crowd without use of engines.

GM in Residence Josh Friedel pictured here during the Saturday night blitz. (Photo courtesy SLCC/Austin Fuller)

Heading out of the club, I see GM Josh Friedel leading a small group through tactics. He’s the GM-in-residence for the duration of the Championship. There’s chess everywhere you look.

The next day, IM Eric Rosen joins Anna and GM Robby Kevlishvili in the commentary room. I learn about chess.ceo, another ChessBase replacement project. Everyone is trying to vibecode their dream apps, myself included.

Last stop before returning home – Clementine’s Ice Cream, right around the corner from the Club. It’s busy even a half-hour before close. I get a small scoop of the honey lavender and remember when this particular building was the site of one of the most infamous chapters in recent chess history, the Carlsen – Niemann game in 2023. I wonder if there should be a historical plaque somewhere, and then I wonder what shape the plaque would be.