Vignesh Panchanatham

St. Louis is the capital city of United States chess. The World Chess Hall of Fame and some of the most prestigious tournaments held on US soil are played in the city. Two of the top collegiate chess programs are headquartered in St. Louis. Yet, over my 14+ years as a chess player, I had never been to St. Louis to visit or play a tournament at the chess club. Fortunately, I thought, my travels through the Midwest finally gave me the opportunity to visit. Yet, by the time I left, I did basically everything chess-related but go see the club. I am currently working on an article for the Chess Life magazine about the world of college chess, so I have been setting up interviews with the coaches of the scholarship programs across the US. Since Webster University and St. Louis University both were located nearby, I scheduled times to meet with the coaches of the two schools. My former chess coach, Sam Shankland, was also in town for a tournament and I got to catch up...

After picking up his work permit from Princeton, Felipe only arrived at our AirBnB in Indianapolis at 4 in the morning. He took the morning off, but after that, we were finally able to attend meetings together. Despite the good news, we didn’t have any huge meetings in Indy. In my morning meeting, I got grilled by the CEO of a small consulting firm, who also happened to own multiple local newspapers, about Business Today’s publication side. He asked a lot of different questions about the number of people that we reach and ultimately came away unconvinced even after I presented our statistics. The conversation was filled with constructive criticism, so I cut my losses and simply listened to the interesting pieces of advice he was giving me. Later, I had a meeting with the Indianapolis Colts, the only football team we had the chance to meet throughout the summer. I was super excited about the meeting even though I had already anticipated that they didn’t plan on donating. My as...