American chess grandmaster

Benjamin Philip Finegold (born September 6, 1969) is an American chess grandmaster and YouTuber/Twitch streamer. He had previously been nicknamed the "strongest International Master in the United States" until receiving his Grandmaster (GM) *le in 2009.

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.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
• 3 Personal life
• 4 References
• 5 Further reading
• 6 External links

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.

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

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."

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

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), 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-aut*d a chess book with chess master Bob Ciaffone, *led Smith-Morra Gambit, Finegold Defense.

In September 2009, he earned his third and final grandmaster norm at the SPICE Cup in Lubbock, Texas. 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."

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

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. 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.

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 112,000 followers on. Highlights and clips from his Twitch streams are regularly uploaded to his Youtube Channel with the same name. As of January 2022, his YouTube channel has over 96,500 subscribers. He also has a Twitter account, with more than 12,000 followers as of January 2022.

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

Personal life

Finegold was a student at Wayne State University.

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

Finegold has been a vegetarian since 1986. He became a vegan as a New Year's resolution in 2018.

References

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

• Benjamin Finegold rating card at FIDE
• Benjamin P. Finegold rating and tournament record at US Chess Federation
• Benjamin Finegold FIDE rating history at OlimpBase.org
• Benjamin Finegold player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Lectures with GM Ben Finegold at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta YouTube channel
• Lectures with GM Ben Finegold at the Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube channel
• Ben Finegold on Twitch
• Ben Finegold member profile at Chess.com
• Ben Finegold member profile at Lichess