Ben Finegold

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Ben Finegold
Benjamin Finegold 2009.jpg
Finegold in 2009
Full nameBenjamin Philip Finegold
CountryUnited States
Born (1969-09-06) 6 September 1969 (age 52)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
TitleGrandmaster (2009)
FIDE rating2446 (December 2021)
Peak rating2563 (January 2006)

Benjamin Philip Finegold (born September 6, 1969) is an American chess grandmaster. He had previously been nicknamed the "strongest international master in the United States" until receiving his grandmaster title in 2009.[1]

Finegold became a USCF master at the age of 14, life master (USCF) at 15, senior master (USCF) at 16, international master (FIDE) at 20, and grandmaster (FIDE) at 40.

Early life[]

Finegold was born in Detroit, Michigan into a chess family, the son of chess master Ron Finegold and his wife Rita. He learned the rules of chess at age 5 and received his first USCF rating at age 6.

Stuart Rachels says when he was twelve he saw Ben Finegold and his father Ron hustling in a chess club at Manhattan, offering 8-1 money bets on one-minute-per-player bullet games.[2]

Finegold graduated high school in June 1986 at the age of 16. Afterward, he moved to Columbus, Ohio to pursue chess.[3]

Career[]

Finegold said he had played in hundreds of tournament games a year when he was young: "I loved chess and if I lost it did not matter to me. That's the main thing you have to do to get better at chess - if you lose hundreds of games in a row, that's OK".[4]

Finegold received the US Chess Trust's Samford fellowship in 1993.[3]

Finegold tied for first place in the 1994 (Chicago, Illinois) and 2007 (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) U.S. Open Chess Championships. He tied for first (and achieved a grandmaster norm) in the 2002 World Open (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania),[5][6] and also tied for first in the 2005 and 2008 National Open Chess Championships (Las Vegas, Nevada). He was ranked as one of the top 40 players in the United States on the August 2013 USCF rating list. Finegold has played in nine U.S. Chess Championships: 1994 (Key West, Florida), 1999 (Salt Lake City, Utah), 2002 (Seattle, Washington), 2005 (La Jolla, California), 2006 (San Diego, California), 2008 (Tulsa, Oklahoma), 2010 (Saint Louis, Missouri), 2011 (Saint Louis, Missouri), and 2013 (Saint Louis, Missouri).

In 2000, Finegold co-authored a chess book with chess master Bob Ciaffone, titled Smith-Morra Gambit, Finegold Defense.[7]

In September 2009, he earned his third and final grandmaster norm at the SPICE Cup in Lubbock, Texas.[8] He was the grandmaster-in-residence of the Saint Louis Chess Club (formerly the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis) until August 14, 2012, where he filmed a number of chess YouTube videos.

Finegold's USCF rating has been "as high as 2662, at which point he was neck and neck with GM Larry Christiansen for the distinction of being the highest rated American born chess player in the country."[9]

In 2017, Finegold and his wife Karen co-founded the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta.[10]

He has been a live commentator at the US Chess Championship, U.S. Junior Chess Championship, Sinquefield Cup, and Chess World Cup. He also frequently gave lively and often humorous instructional lectures at the Saint Louis Chess Club.[11][12] Finegold's lectures are available on the YouTube channels of the Saint Louis Chess Club as well as the channel of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta and on Twitch.

Ben Finegold
Twitch information
Channel
Years active2018 - present
GenreGaming
GamesChess
Followers100,000
YouTube information
Channel
Subscribers87,400[13]
Total views13,104,043[13]

As of 2021, Finegold streams chess five to six times a week, particularly on Twitch under the handle "GMBenjaminFinegold", an account he currently has over 100,000 followers on. [14] Highlights and clips from his Twitch streams are regularly uploaded to his Youtube Channel with the same name. As of August 2021 his YouTube channel has over 87,000 subscribers.[15] He also has a Twitter account, with close to 10,000 followers as of 2021.

Finegold has appeared 3 times as a guest on the Perpetual Chess Podcast hosted by national master Ben Johnson.[16]

Personal life[]

Finegold was a student at Wayne State University.[3]

In July 1988 Finegold moved to Brussels, Belgium with Gina Lynne LoSasso, one of the top female players in the US.[17] Finegold and Gina were married on January 1989 in Hastings, England. They have a son, Spencer Finegold, who is a chess National Master.[3] He met his second wife, Kelly, on the Internet Chess Club. They married in March 2001 and have a daughter, Erum.[3] He is currently living with his third wife Karen Boyd, a chess player with a background in programming.

Finegold has been a vegetarian since finishing school in 1986 and in 2018 he became a vegan as a New Year's resolution. Some time in 2005 he describes losing up to 100 pounds, going from 325 to 225.[18]

References[]

  1. ^ McClain, Dylan Loeb (October 3, 2009). "A Long Overdue Promotion After a Strong Finish in Texas (Published 2009)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
  2. ^ Stuart Rachels (April 10, 2020). "22". The Best I Saw in Chess: Games, Stories and Instruction from an Alabama Prodigy Who Became U.S. Champion. New in Chess. ISBN 978-90-5691-882-8.
  3. ^ a b c d e Finegold, Ben (February 2010). "The 40 -Year - Old GM". Chess Life.
  4. ^ Stephen Moss (September 22, 2016). The Rookie: An Odyssey through Chess (and Life). Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 266. ISBN 978-1-4081-8971-9.
  5. ^ World Open 2002 Standings – Open Section, chessevents.com, access date March 28, 2021
  6. ^ Results from the 2002 World Open, www.thechessdrum.net, access date March 28, 2021
  7. ^ Ciaffone, Bob; Finegold, Ben (March 1, 2000). Smith-Morra Gambit, Finegold Defense.
  8. ^ "The United States Chess Federation - GM Benjamin Finegold". United States Chess Federation. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
  9. ^ "The United States Chess Federation - GM Benjamin Finegold". uschess.org. Retrieved August 2, 2021.
  10. ^ "Grand Opening of the CCSCATL". Retrieved March 16, 2021.
  11. ^ "Benoni, Benko Gambit, Nimzo Indian - GM Ben Finegold - 2014.01.26". YouTube.com. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  12. ^ "Opening Traps and Loose Pieces with GM Ben Finegold". Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  13. ^ a b "About YouTube channel". YouTube.
  14. ^ Rosenblatt, Kalhan; Abbruzzese, Jason (February 17, 2020). "Speed and trash talk: Inside the 'new chess culture' and its online revival". NBC News. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
  15. ^ "GMBenjaminFinegold - YouTube". youtube.com. Retrieved August 1, 2021.
  16. ^ "The Perpetual Chess Podcast". The Perpetual Chess Podcast. Retrieved August 1, 2021.
  17. ^ "The 40 -Year - Old GM". digitaledition.qwinc.com. Retrieved August 1, 2021.
  18. ^ "Ben's Blog: Working Out". Saint Louis Chess Club. January 27, 2010. Retrieved August 1, 2021.

Further reading[]

  • "The 40-Year-Old GM", by Ben Finegold, Chess Life, February 2010, pp. 18–25.
  • "Smith-Morra Gambit, Finegold Defense" by Ben Finegold and Bob Ciaffone, Amazon, March 2000

External links[]

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