The world’s top chess players gathered in St. Louis on Wednesday night to celebrate the closing of the Sinquefield Cup, an internationally renowned chess competition.

Levon Aronian, 32, a player from Yerevan, Armenia, was introduced as the winner of the Sinquefield Cup and its $75,000 prize.

Mayor Francis Slay was on hand to thank the competition’s 10 players, as well as Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, for whom the competition is named and who are responsible for the creation of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

Chess, Slay said, has become “a part of our fabric. This is huge for the city of St. Louis.”

Aronian began playing chess when he was 9 years old at an unstable time in Armenia, a nation that was once part of the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, chess became a substitute for school and an endeavor on which his unemployed parents, both of whom were scientists, could focus.

Despite his family’s hardships, Aronian was able to study under Melik Khachiyan, a chess grandmaster, who in exchange for housing, trained Aronian in chess.

“It is definitely fun but also a big responsibility,” Aronian says now of chess.

“I want to play as long as I enjoy it,” said Aronian, a grandmaster himself. He predicted he would continue to play chess for at least 10 years.

The Sinquefield Cup is an annual tournament that is part of the Grand Chess Tour, which includes stops in Norway and London.

The Grand Chess Tour has a “track record of being the gold standard in chess,” said Tony Rich, executive director of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

“Our goal is to create intellectual role models out of these superstars of chess,” Rich said, noting that the Chess Club and Scholastic Center works with about 100 schools in the region to use chess as an educational tool.

Rich also described Aronian as “probably one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.”

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center brought the U.S. Chess Championships to town, along with the World Chess Hall of Fame.

Speaking of the stiff, unnerving competition evident at this year’s Sinquefield Cup, Rich said “a nuclear bomb could go off outside, and they probably wouldn’t notice.”

“You can just feel their anguish and their pain,” Rich said.

Next year’s Sinquefield Cup is scheduled to take place from Aug. 19 to Sept. 2.

Source: stltoday.com