The Chess Experience
The Chess Experience
Behind The Scenes of Chess Journalism with Vanessa Sun
104 This week’s guest is Vanessa Sun, a former chess journalist. For years, she covered events for US Chess, from major national tournaments like the US Open to local competitions.
She was also a tournament director at the famous Marshall Chess Club in New York City. Plus, she’s volunteered for IM Greg Shahade at the US Chess School, which is a nonprofit that offers free chess coaching to the most promising juniors in the country.
Beyond her chess experiences, she’s an atmospheric chemist and is currently in a Ph.D program.
In this episode, we chat about her chess journey, including:
- What unique insights about chess she’s gained from covering tournaments and doing interviews as a chess journalist.
- Why she prefers classical and calls herself a “blitz hater.”
- Whether there’s any link between playing chess and intelligence.
- The powerful impact chess can have on people’s lives, even if they don’t make a career of it or work on the game regularly.
>> Join my official FREE club for The Chess Experience on Chess.com<< (PROMOTION)
Hi Vanessa, how are you doing today?
Vanessa:Hi Daniel, I'm doing really well.
Daniel:That's great. I'm super excited to chat with you today. I've known you on well sort of quote unquote, known you on Twitter for a little while as well, while you were active with Chess Twitter, so I had a chance to interact a little bit with you there. But I'm just happy that we get a chance to talk live for an extended time today.
Vanessa:Yeah, I'm super excited to be here and to just do something chess related for the first time in a while for me.
Daniel:Yeah, I'm happy that we get to talk about chess and we'll cover kind of like all aspects of what you've done in your chess life, so to speak, and even a little bit about what you, what you do outside of chess and have done outside of chess. And actually we might as well just start with that so people get a little sense of it. So you are in a PhD program right now. Can you describe a little bit of that?
Vanessa:Yeah, so I describe myself as an atmospheric chemist, slash atmospheric scientist. I'm interested in studying air quality. I'm doing my PhD at the University of Utah and right now I'm studying some air quality issues in the local Salt Lake City area. Super excited, I've just started my program after finishing my master's at MIT in a similar area, mit in a similar area, and, yeah, I guess that covers what I'm doing right now.
Daniel:Sure. Well, that's very impressive your academic career and what you're studying. How did you get interested in that subject in the first place?
Vanessa:I started off studying theoretical mathematics when I was in college and then I had this shift a couple years back, right at the tail end of my degree, where I was thinking that I wanted to do work that had a bit more of an impact on the world. Felt like climate change was sort of the big problem that I think that we need to be putting a lot of our best scientific minds into, and yeah, so I just kind of kept going in that direction.
Daniel:Wow, that's fantastic. I mean it's very important work and that's exciting that you're contributing to that. I don't know I was thinking about this before we started recording today that you were in a PhD program, a science-based PhD program, and just last week the guy interviewed, who's also an adult improver, is a surgeon, and so I'm just kind of very impressed with the caliber of guests that I have in terms of their academic backgrounds and, frankly, just their intelligence. And it's kind of a funny thing to me bringing this into chess, because it's often said in chess that oh, for people who played a lot and do it, they know that, oh, just because you play chess, it doesn't mean like you're super intelligent necessarily or anything like that, and I don't dispute that. However, given the caliber of guests that I often have on this show and what they do outside of chess, they're often doing things with a lot of intellectual rigor. Do you think there's any connection there at all that maybe people who like chess are interested in some intellectual pursuits?
Vanessa:I've talked about this recently with a friend because I was saying that I know a lot of people like to watch educational YouTube videos and I was saying to them that I can't do that because I need my free time to do like relaxing activities and things like that. And that friend was telling me that they really loved watching these educational YouTube videos because it just kind of pumps them up and gets them really motivated and excited. And I think that there are people out there who are just sort of like a sponge, you know, like they are so excited about doing all these. I don't know, I don't want to say intellectual activities, like we were saying when you preface this question, but are just really excited to learn and engage in activities that they have to put a lot of thinking into and are really excited. I want to see about knowledge or, yeah, just kind of these cognitively intensive activities.
Vanessa:For me personally, I've kind of found the opposite. As I was saying, I need my rest time from my research to be more relaxing activities Like I. I'm also an artist, so work sometimes I will work on my art I'll. That also is cognitively intensive in some ways, but not in the same way that chess is, and I think that maybe it comes from just like kind of people being really excited and really wanting to tap into these kinds of activities where they have to think a lot or read a lot, right.
Daniel:And I may definitely understand your point about you know, once you've had a full day of work I guess you could say you know that doing more intellectually rigorous activities is not necessarily super attractive at that point in the day, but do you feel like you would characterize yourself as someone who is drawn to intellectual pursuits or things that challenge your mind?
Vanessa:Yeah, I think I would agree with that, yeah.
Daniel:Right, right, yeah, I mean I'm not trying to make a definitive conclusion on you know, chess players and intellectual pursuits, necessarily, but, man, it does it. Just, you know, with the guests that I interview. You know, not everyone I interview is a full-time chess player or does chess full-time, and it's like whenever I hear of what they do outside of that it is often math and science and things of intense intellectual rigor, and so I don't know that playing chess makes you smart per se, but as much as I'd like to believe that sometimes, but it does seem like perhaps people who play chess aren't necessarily they don't shy away from things that challenge their mind I feel like I maybe say at least that I don't know your thoughts.
Vanessa:Yeah, I think that's a really good way to phrase it, that they're not shying away from things that challenge you. I think it's also that it's a little bit adjacent, you know, like it's not quite what you would be doing on a day to day basis in your work. You know, if you're doing something math or science related, let's say that it's still challenging in a similar kind of way, but it's not. You know, you're doing math like science while playing chess.
Daniel:Right, yeah, exactly. Well, I'd like to talk a little bit about your just chess background and how you got into the game and things like that. I know you've done, you know, a lot in chess. That isn't the typical casual player's experience, which is really exciting. I can't wait to get to that stuff as well. But just kind of starting from the beginning, what got you into the game in the first place?
Vanessa:In the very, very beginning my dad taught me how to play chess. I don't know how old I was, but I was pretty young. Um, I don't know how old I was, but I was pretty young. Um, and uh, I remember, like in third grade, I got really mad at my friend because we were playing chess at recess and she was telling me that the knight moved in this way and I was like very insistent that it moved, um, the you know the correct way that that the knight moves.
Vanessa:And um, I started going to chess lessons when I was a young kid because I was one of those kids who was very chatty, couldn't sit still, and my parents found that chess was the only time that I could really just sit still and listen to what the teacher was going through.
Vanessa:And my dad probably recognized it from when I played chess with him, because we would play these like long all day games on weekends sometimes, because my dad hadn't learned chess to, hadn't played tournament chess, so he he hadn't used a timer before a clock when he played. And I think that that also developed my love of strictly classical chess, because I kind of can't play much fast chess and I just love the long time, like five hour games in tournaments and things, and it probably stems from that like childhood game style that I had with my dad for so long and yeah, so I started playing just a little bit of chess when I was a kid. I'm from Long Island in New York and I went to Long Island Chess Nuts there and they just really fostered a great space for me to play chess and I had a really good time in those chess classes.
Daniel:That's awesome. How frequent was that? Was that just like one class a week, or was it more than that?
Vanessa:Yeah, I think it was about one class a week.
Daniel:Nice, I like hearing that you said that you're really into the classical time control in that format.
Vanessa:I bet you don't hear it too often from people.
Daniel:Yeah, not as much as I want to. I mean, most people gravitate towards that I talked to like who are amateurs gravitate towards, I think, Blitz or Rapid as their favorite time controls. But so, yeah, it is nice to hear that I feel like I'm in a little bit of a minority maybe a large minority, but still a minority in saying that bit of a minority maybe a large minority, but still a minority.
Vanessa:In saying that, yeah, I also wonder if people have enjoyed these shorter time controls if they grew up playing a lot of chess in the computer. But because, um, I stem my like experiences from me, having played those like hours long games with my dad and then, um, even when I played um sort sort of in the chess clubs that I was in, we still played like rapid, you know, like 30, 45 minute games, because you know you want kids to like sit there and actually think for a long while.
Daniel:Right, yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad that you kind of had that experience and exposure and I think you're right. I would suspect that you know, maybe people who grew up in the era of internet chess, so to speak, maybe have a preference for that. Yeah, that can make sense. In fact, I've even kind of noticed that it develops a preference for it, even if you didn't grow up with it, just because it's just so common and easily accessible to just go online and get a blitz game, rapid game, bullet game. You know that people just kind of fall into that as the way of how they often play.
Vanessa:Yeah, I also think that I just did not play almost any online chess for the longest time. Like, if I think about how much online chess I've played, I feel like I only started playing a little bit of online chess like 20 years, maybe 2017. I don't know. I did like tactics online, but I didn't really get used to playing on like chesscom or Lee chess when I was really active in tournament play.
Daniel:Honestly, so how did your chess life, you know, like before you were an adult, progress from there? I know you said you did these weekly classes and your dad introduced you. Did it ever evolve into something beyond that? Did you start going to tournaments? Did you get a coach or any of those types of things?
Vanessa:So my chess club had a more like a local tournament and so every year I don't know, I don't think it was every year, it was probably like every couple of months I started going to this local tournament and for me this was what I thought was sort of like the biggest chess tournament that I could possibly go to at the time.
Vanessa:And then I would occasionally have these local lessons. But at some point in that club, when you reached a certain level, there were kids who got invited to the to be on this club team for the US amateur team East and that was like the next level, the next step up from like the local tournament. For me, you know, and so for, actually it's kind of funny because that tournament is really important to my development as a chess player, because that was a tournament that I actually went to for like six years in a row, into my college years even. Yeah, I started off going to that tournament and it was just like really fun.
Vanessa:I like the, the team aspect of of chess in those ways, like how your score adds up, and then also just having other people around you that are um, that you're not just like competing with everybody, you know, like you have your team with you, um, and I just associate that with like um, a really fun, like longer tournament. So that with like a really fun, like longer tournament. So that was like my introduction to actually having like a longer tournament. And you'd think that like, since I'm from Long Island, not too far away from New York City, that I would have started going to more events there, but it was still like a little far away enough and you know I was a kid at the time, so it wasn't too easy for me to go to new york city, um, so I couldn't really like take advantage of those.
Vanessa:so I remember like us amateur teamies, being like the big one, um. And then as I got like um a bit older, into into um college, I started going to uh bigger tournaments, like I went to the Manhattan Open, the World Open a couple of years, but that sort of intersected with some of the chess journalism that I've done and making it easier to do some of those trips.
Daniel:Yeah, that's fantastic that you had all those experiences with the US Amateur East Tournament, right, yeah, and they do them across the US, some different areas.
Vanessa:I'm not sure where you live and if you've ever been to one, but it's a really fun tournament.
Daniel:Yeah, I was just going to mention that. So I have been to one. I'd like to have gone to more and I will do more in the future, but I did US Amateur Team North here I'm in Chicago and it was about two years ago two years ago, I think, in 22, that I went there for the first time and I couldn't agree more that it's just so nice to not be competing against everybody and to have you know, like a support team essentially, while you're there. It just it's a completely different experience, I think, and one that I probably prefer. I don't know about you.
Vanessa:I think it's also that they build in these fun aspects to it. They have a costume contest, a team name contest and yeah, I think just all those together makes it a very different kind of space than most tournaments and for a kid I think that that's just so exciting.
Daniel:Yeah, yeah, and I can attest as an adult. It was exciting, so I don't know what that says about me. But yeah, but yeah, it is a fantastic experience. I wish there was more events like that. That's the only one I know of here in Chicago. I don't think they're particularly common in the US, but yeah, I think when someone has a chance to do it, they definitely show because they're a great experience.
Vanessa:I wonder if they have a bit more of those in some of the big scholastic tournaments, because you know, the kids who have. Like the school teams might still have that team aspect in normal tournaments that they go to together with the people at their school, but I actually never attended them when I was a kid. I didn't even know that. I don't think I knew that they even really existed.
Daniel:Right, right. So yeah, I'd like to talk about your chess journalism career, which is really exciting, and I don't know that I've talked to too many people who have done that on the show a few, but not many, and not in the way that you've done it. So you became a chess journalist in 2016. How did that opportunity arise for you? Were you seeking it out? How did that begin?
Vanessa:So I was asked by my friend, candidate master Alice Dong. She was looking for writers for this blog called Chess Summit, which her friend who's also a candidate master, isaac Steinkamp, was running. It doesn't exist anymore but it was a great little blog project. While it ran, isaac asked me to write for Chess Summit and one of the first blog posts that I wrote was about my experience volunteering for the US Chess School with. I am Greg Shahadi, and the US Chess School is this invite-only program that Greg runs for some of the top kids in the United States playing chess and it's just a little camp kind of to help these kids work on their chess with other kids across the country. And I started doing some social media for Greg for the US chess school. I don't even remember how that happened. I think I kind of just reached out to him randomly. I don't remember we might have been Facebook friends then because I was. I was just randomly Facebook friends with some chess people and I wrote about my experience there at the US chess school. So Greg really liked my post and he said if he had read it before he would have pitched it to his sister, jennifer Shahadi, who's a women GM slash international master If he had read it before and he knew that it would be that good. It's because Jen was an editor for the news section of the website for the US Chess Federation at the time and that was sort of like I was on, I guess, jen and Greg's radar or something for something that I had written.
Vanessa:So I attended the World Chess Championship in 2016, which was in New York, where I was living at the time Well, I was living in New York for most of my life, but so I, yeah, I went to the tournament, really enjoyed it, and I wrote about the tiebreak system and Jen really liked it and she asked me for a longer piece for us chess and um. Then, when I traveled to go to the us amateur team east tournament, I asked jen if it'd be possible to write about that um, and then it sort of just kept going after that where, um, she would ask me if I'm going to this tournament or I would ask her if I could cover this particular tournament and yeah, that's kind of how I started doing my writing. But I guess it was just the right. People saw my writing for the first time and thought it was really good and that I had unique insight that I guess other people hadn't really put in their articles before.
Daniel:That's amazing. I love that story. I love how you got connected with Greg and then Jen and it just sort of blossomed from there. So did you just instantly enjoy doing coverage of tournaments and writing about them? Did it surprise you at all that you enjoyed it that much? Or I mean, what were your feelings about covering those events?
Vanessa:So I've been a strong writer for most of my life and I really enjoyed writing it at the time. I think I never thought that I could apply it to something like chess and that I had insights that were kind of exciting and I don't know different. I really like the human aspect of chess and I like getting to know people's stories and talking to people and I think that that probably fed into it that I just really liked talking to people and learning about like their chess stories. Maybe I should have my own chess podcast. I don't know.
Vanessa:But, I think I'm really drawn to hearing people's experiences with chess and being able to put that out there somewhere in the world to like represent people's stories, and yeah, I think that that was an aspect that I just really enjoyed about doing that kind of work.
Daniel:Was that what constituted most of your chess journalism career, covering big tournaments, or were there other types of things that you reported on as well?
Vanessa:I would say that it wasn't necessarily big tournaments. So I went to a lot of scholastic tournaments and I did a lot of those. Necessarily big tournaments, so I went to a lot of scholastic tournaments and I did a lot of those. But I also and I've covered tournaments such as the US Open, I think, world Open and things like that. But there are also some smaller things, like there's a I don't know if it's still running, but there's a charity chess tournament that somebody in New York made where it was a big fundraiser for I think it was for cancer or something at one point in time. It was like kind of a fundraiser tournament where they got some great chess players to be there. I know that they had Fabiano Carano one year and those were sort of like smaller, you know, like those feel good stories.
Vanessa:Right, for me, I felt like there were a lot of limitations because I'm actually not a very good chess player, which is very surprising given, like, how many tournaments I was able to cover and things like that. That was again like a unique perspective. Um, that I I also brought into chess because I think it kind of shows that I didn't necessarily need to be the best chess player but I knew a lot about, like chess culture and I I had watched like plenty of tournament commentary um growing up as well, a lot of the like st louis chess club, um coverage for big tournaments and things like that. So yeah, so I wouldn't say it was necessarily big tournaments, but I and for those bigger tournaments, you know, I often had to sort of report on, like the actual who won the tournament and things like that. But again, like I really liked interviewing a lot of the other players there who had really interesting stories and it didn't necessarily have to be those super huge tournaments.
Vanessa:I also did for ChessKid a player profile. I think I did one of Christopher Yu and maybe Abhimanyu Mishra. This is a couple years ago, but I think I did two player profiles and it was probably those two players. And so I try to vary it a little bit where it's not just oh, this is what happened in this tournament and there were these this is a story of some of the people there, but tried to vary it with Chess Kid and things like that.
Daniel:I can relate because I interview on this show lots of players who are way better at chess than me, so I understand that perspective. So, when you're going to these tournaments and covering them and interviewing players again, this is something I can be sympathetic to which is, you know, not knowing chess as well as the people that you're interviewing, what angle do you take in those scenarios, given that it's difficult to talk chess or comment on the games as well as the players can?
Vanessa:First, I wanted to clarify when I say that I'm not a very good chess player, I mean that my rating has literally never crossed 1200. Just because I didn't say that when you asked the previous question, and I think that everyone has a different metric for like what is a good chess player, but I I think it maybe would soothe the listeners to know that, like um I, I really wasn't very good at chess um, and so a lot of times to compensate for um, lot of the bigger tournaments, what I would do is I would partner with somebody, usually a titled player, that would give commentary on the actual games themselves, and Michael Rode provided commentary and we ended up getting one of those Best of US Chess Life Online awards in 2018. And so that helped give the more technical perspective to what I was reporting on and, in general, I guess my approach when I actually went to these tournaments and interviewed people was that I just walked around the tournament venue and just kind of talked to a lot of people. So I talked to everyone, including, like, chess coaches, like parents who are sitting there, kids, maybe kids who have finished their games, in addition to tracking down, you know, the people who are winning the tournament and everything, and then I would just listen to their stories and what they had to say and I would say that I never really started writing that first day because I was just sort of listening to everyone's stories.
Vanessa:And then it's kind of weird. It's like a narrative sort of appears before me after I talk to enough people and like what is sort of the story of this particular tournament? Um, and when the tournament uh comes to an end, you know, there's the people who win the tournament and um, usually I have to talk to them and um get some of the expertise uh on um the games that are played. I think occasionally, um some of the people who who actually won the game sorry, won the tournament um provided um commentary and like annotated games, it was a way for them to also put their impact on on the articles that I wrote um to have like their perspective from their games themselves. Uh, and yeah, that's sort of the process that I took when I was at these tournaments and writing about them.
Daniel:Gotcha. Yeah, that's great. That's just a really effective way of doing it, I think. To combine your insights and perspectives with a title player doing that dynamic. That makes a lot of sense. So you've been at events where there's been some chess legends like Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov. Having been at some events where there's these incredible opportunities to see them, maybe even interview them, do you have a favorite memory from your chess journalism career?
Vanessa:So I have two and they're quite a bit different. So the first one is being able to go to the All Girls Nationals tournament. I only went once. It was held in Chicago. I don't know if it's held in Chicago every year, but it was held in Chicago that year. I used to get those Trust Life magazines and they all have the advertisements for tournaments and things.
Vanessa:I remember when I was in high school seeing an advertisement for all girls nationals and I really wanted to go so badly. But, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I had started off, you know, going to those like local tournaments and then I had my dad to drive me to New Jersey to go to like amateur team East. We only really went to tournaments that were nearby and I wanted to go so badly to all girls nationals and I never got to go as a kid. And I was really excited when I got the opportunity to go as a chess journalist because it was kind of like a fulfillment of something that I had really wanted to do as a kid, as a girl growing up playing chess. Honestly, it was just something that, like I could see myself on the other side. This is a way that I still got something out of a dream that I had as a kid. So that was really impactful and I would guess that a lot of girls and women who grew up playing chess might have a similar kind of tale in going to like some kind of all girls tournament in this way.
Vanessa:And they do a really good job in supporting these kinds of tournaments and I saw a lot more of them, I think, when I was in college doing this chess journalism and I'm just really glad that they exist. So that was a really good experience for me. The second thing, much shorter of a story, fm Ethan Lee came up to me at a tournament once and he told me that he really liked my articles and it was the first time that I kind of felt like well, one, somebody was reading them, like well, one, somebody was reading them and two, that he just very selflessly came up to me, recognized me, and it just made me feel like I had a place in chess. That, as I mentioned, I'm not a very good chess player Early on in my chess journalism career. I think that it really bothered me and to hear that validation from somebody that they recognized me and that they liked my work, it was just really life-changing for me.
Daniel:Yeah, that's amazing. I love that story Collectively all the experiences that you had as a chess journalist, all the events that you covered, people that you've met. It gives you a perspective and experience in chess that a lot of the typical adult club players don't have. So what would you say are some insights that you have on that scene in competitive chess or maybe even just chess in general, that are unique from having had those experiences?
Vanessa:I think from talking to all these different kinds of people at chess tournaments gave me an appreciation for how many non-chess players are involved with putting an event together.
Vanessa:I mean, they can be chess players, but I'm talking about the staff who work at the tournaments the tournament directors I mean, I was a tournament director at the Marshall Chess Club, but so I would obviously purposely look out for them. The tournament directors um, I mean, I was a tournament director at a the marshall chess club, but so I would obviously purposely look out for them. You know, um, but, uh, I played millionaire chess in 2016 and I think that um, amy and maurice really gave that event like so much life and vibrance. Um, and it added a lot to it. And and meeting chess parents and knowing that they have a significant impact on bringing their kids to the tournaments, trying to figure out which tournaments that their kids are going to go to, and things like that.
Vanessa:When you're at a tournament as a player, I feel like you can get really in your own head, your own bubble, really in your own head, like your own bubble, and you're just hanging out with your friends and not really like seeing all the people around you that like come together to to be able to make chess happen and to play chess at these, these places. I will admit, although I feel like throughout my time as a chess journalist, I got to know a lot of people at all levels, but I did fangirl quite a bit at like a lot of the famous chess players pretty early on. I think the other thing that I would say is that, for top chess players specifically, one interesting perspective that I got was that for some people chess just consumes so much of their lives. Sometimes it can be a bad thing. I knew this grandmaster who wanted to do other aspects professionally but they kind of felt really stuck with just being in chess. But they kind of felt really stuck with just being in chess. And other times it can be a really good thing because it makes me appreciate, like how people can be sustained by this niche, you know game and how excitement for the game just kind of drives people for like a really long time. And I've also seen how chess has changed people's lives pretty significantly, um, especially at like the titled levels, um.
Vanessa:So one example is that I actually saw, I think, on tiktok that um fm wesley wang is a is a filmmaker now and um they were talking about because he had this like one film that he put on YouTube that just like blew up and he I don't know I saw he was like going to like some film festivals and all these things and he raised a lot of money to produce these films and people on on this, like TikTok, were saying that oh, he's just as successful because he comes from money. He's rich. I don't think he's. He's like come from a super rich family, by the way, but according to the video that I was watching, he actually raised a lot of that money from teaching chess, like he.
Vanessa:I guess he taught enough chess lessons and a lot of that money came in and that he was able to fund this film. And I just, I don't know. I think that that's, and that he was able to fund this film, and I just, I don't know. I think that that's. That's just a really nice thing and I didn't expect to see it. This was like a couple months ago that I just saw this, and WGM slash I am Dorsa Daraqshani is also one of these people that that stands out to me in terms of like how chess has changed her life, because she's talked about how she was able to leave Iran through chess and now she's in medical school, and like how chess was sort of the way that she was able to do all that.
Vanessa:And I think that that is even with people who aren't like titled players, I don't know, but just appreciating like how chess has changed and shaped people's lives in this way and still continues to, even for people who aren't so actively playing chess as much, and I think that it just shows like chess it has helped me appreciate chess as sort of like a vehicle of change in this way, and sometimes, you know, we don't have to think about it so largely like this right. Sometimes it's just a fun game, but sometimes it's not, Like now. They have all these programs for people in prison to learn chess and I don't know, just like all these kinds of initiatives, and it just shows that chess can just be really far reaching in all these ways that you don't really expect, you know.
Daniel:That's. Yeah, those are great insights. First of all and I love your last point about just the impact that chess can make on people's lives, Because you're right, I mean it can be for some people just a game they play and it's just some fun on the side and it never rises above that. But for other people it can be life-changing and if not even quite life-changing, just very influential in your life. And I appreciate that you highlight that, because I hear both.
Daniel:I hear that chess is just a game and I hear that chess is life. But I kind of go back and forth and I think the truth is it can be either one, but I think it's easier to underestimate that it can be so much more than a game for a lot of people. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, yeah, so I know that you began writing for US Chess and going kind of heavy on the chess journalism at a time when you'd already chosen a career path with your college major time, when you'd already chosen a career path with your college major. But just hypothetically, do you think you could see yourself having enjoyed a full-time career in chess journalism if the timing had been different, or do you think it was always better suited for you as a side project.
Vanessa:For me personally, it was not something that I ever really wanted to do full-time. I mean you say that I had really wanted to do full time. I mean you say that I had chosen a career path by then. But that's not entirely true. At that point in time, when I was starting to get into this chess journalism and doing a lot of things in the chess world including being a tournament director as well I was thinking about law school. I also had an art major, I was interning with a fashion designer and working like New York Fashion Weeks, and then toward the tail end, that's when I started studying math. Toward the tail end, that's when I started studying mathematics and I wanted to do research in mathematics specifically, and I've always been the type of person who's interested in a lot of different things and chess was sort of a part of that puzzle. But I really only did it because it was super fun for me, and I do think that it is possible for people who are really motivated about chess to get involved in it um, full time from like a media perspective.
Vanessa:Um, so, uh, I mean there are photographers like um Leonard, um Udis. Uh, he's great and he, he does that full time, um, I believe, uh and uh. There are people who are, um, believe, and there are people who are. I'm sure there are people who also do the chess journalism thing full time or maybe even like, do tournament directing full time and do their own teaching and things like that, and I think that there are a lot of avenues for people to have a chess career and to stay in that area. But for me, I I think that in that time I was doing a lot of exploration, a lot of different things, um, and they were all things that I was super excited about, um, but a lot of them didn't really really seem like they were going to to uh turn into these full-time endeavors.
Daniel:Yeah, that's totally understandable. So yeah, I'm kind of curious about your chess life as it is right now. I know that you're focused on your PhD program and that's huge. I mean, that's a massive endeavor. But is there room for chess at all these days for you and, if so, what does that look like?
Vanessa:So a little while back I started thinking about if I wanted to get a little bit into chess writing again. Um, I had some conversations with jennifer chahadi. Um, I think I was like trying to think about writing for about this one event that happened. I think I even went to it because it was like a virtual thing, um, and didn't, uh, didn't end up writing anything out of it. I think it just got really busy.
Vanessa:Um, and I had like a couple other projects that I thought of in that time, um, things I was interested in looking at.
Vanessa:Um, for example, at the marshall um, I was researching about the past um, women employees of the marshall chess club.
Vanessa:Uh, I always think about doing a piece related to that Um, and I also had thought about like some kind of blog to to highlight more of these like human stories and um, uh, as, as I've been talking about kind of this, this whole interview, and I questioned at the time, like, would anyone even care to read like this kind of little blog of these kinds of uh stories of people talking about like what chess means to them and things like that? You know, like once, it's not like on the big media screen. You know, um, in in, like us chess and and things like that or not like specifically tied to some kind of tournament coverage. But I've thought a little bit about these kinds of things. Um, one of my friends was like trying to convince me to get into streaming because I really love playing chess variants, um, and I've played a lot of them with with title players, um, since I can't play normal chess with them, you know, uh, and and all these, all these things.
Vanessa:Um, I am super COVID, cautious, though, so I don't think that I would go back to normal tournament play. For example, I thought about having more COVID, safer tournaments. One friend had expressed this to me how she also wishes that she could play a bit more chess, but um, doesn't feel like it's very covid, safe, um, and it's kind of hard. Because, you know, like, as I, as we expressed earlier, like more than anything, I love classical chess and you know like I don't really like playing it on the screen and that doesn't really happen very often either. Um, I'm a certified blitz hater, you know. I, I really um, I I just like live for those five-hour games, you know, and I think that's it's really hard for me to get, but um, I do um have a group of um friends that I occasionally get together with and play a little bit of chess. Usually it's just like bug house um that we play together.
Vanessa:Um, so I'm I'm trying to build like a little bit more of that into um my life. I don't know if any of the like projects that I thought of would ever come to fruition, but, um, I think that there's also no like timeline for any of it. You know, um, these are things that I could always go back to um in future. Right, like you know, maybe chess isn't a big part of my life right now, but that doesn't mean it can't change in the future. I don't know if a lot of the Intel improvers that you talked to maybe a lot of them didn't have like the opportunity to play like these classic tournaments as a kid, but you can still get into it as an adult and like later, and there's so much to explore, and so I I wouldn't say that it's like definite that I'm not doing any any more chess ever, but we'll we'll see if any of them ever ends up happening.
Daniel:Yeah, well, I mean, I just like hearing that you know you have some ideas in mind of you know what you might do in chess in the future, and you know, some different possibilities there. That's very cool. So, Vanessa, I close all of my interviews with a segment that's just a series of fun questions. They're a bit shorter in nature and, you know, just to have some fun on kind of like rapid fire chess questions, so to speak. So the first question knights or bishops?
Vanessa:Bishops.
Daniel:Nice, well, okay. So the second question. We talked about your favorite time control being classical, so let me try a different version.
Vanessa:Well, actually I didn't tell you exactly which time control it is. I mean. I would say that it's the one that, like US amateur team East has used like forever, which is like I think it's like two hours for for 40 moves and then an extra hour after that.
Daniel:Very specific, right? Yeah, that was what I was going to ask. You was the specific time control within classical. So that's cool to hear that. Who is your favorite player of all time?
Vanessa:Magnus Carlsen.
Daniel:Nice.
Vanessa:If you could play any of the top players in the world right now, who would it be? Oh then, so bad chess. How am I supposed to play with them? I can play a variant with them, you know sure it can be any format I'm gonna say magnus carlson again. I played him in a simul.
Daniel:That was cool oh, that's awesome, yeah, incredible, yeah, I got I got to play with him in the simul that's amazing. Um, if you could hang out with any chess celebrity for an evening, who would?
Vanessa:it be, oh, it's a different question.
Daniel:You know, like I don't think I would automatically see magnus carlson right um right, so this could be just like hanging out for a meal or something like that.
Vanessa:Yeah you know from from the fact that I haven't seen a lot of my chess friends in a while. I'm gonna going to go with Eric Rosen.
Daniel:Awesome, yeah, he's great.
Vanessa:He's so nice, so we've had really great times together.
Daniel:Would you say you have a chess vice.
Vanessa:Well, okay, so it's not going to be bullet, because you don't even like blitz, but a bug house yeah, and I would say five minute time control bug house, because chesscom now you can only find games that are like three minute bug house and I'm not used to that because I've only played five minute bug house from like childhood till now okay, okay.
Daniel:And my last question if a chess genie existed and could grant you any one chess wish, what would it be?
Vanessa:I originally wrote an answer for this when I wrote my notes for this interview questions thing, but I think I'm going to change my answer. My original answer was that I wish that the Marshall Chess Club was bigger physically. I like that. But, this is kind of okay. My one wish would be that Fabiano Caruana finally won the World Chess Championship.
Daniel:Yeah, I love that. I love that. I want to second that one. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Well, that's a great way to finish our interview. Vanessa, I really enjoyed chatting with you, loved hearing about all of your experiences as a chess journalist and what it's meant to you and just how it's impacted your life. So I just want to say thank you so much for being on the show and chatting with me, and I had a great time.
Vanessa:Yeah, this was really fun and really different. I don't know. I think it kind of made me feel excited about chess again and like a little nostalgic. So maybe I'll have to do a little bit more thinking on if I want to pick up something chess related, whether it's playing more games with friends or doing something more bigger than that. So really thankful that you invited me to be here and to talk about chess.
Daniel:Yeah, it's my pleasure and I couldn't be more delighted to hear that it got your mind thinking about some ways to incorporate a little more chess into your life. That would be awesome. And, yeah, thank you so much for being on the show, vanessa. It was great chatting with you.
Vanessa:Yeah, thank you so much for having me here.
