In a world filled with sketchy stratagems and bad moves in every direction, the grandmasters of chess stand apart.
There are fewer than 2,000 grandmasters worldwide. They play the “royal game” at the highest level, having earned their spot by competing against (and beating) other grandmasters. Typically, they’ve spent decades honing their skills, and experienced a life in 64 squares that few people can fully comprehend.
That is, unless they happen to be two Yale undergraduates — who also happen to be assigned to the same residential college.
Yale College’s resident grandmasters, 18-year-old first-year Arthur Guo and 23-year-old senior Nicolas Checa, are both part of Trumbull College, where they share a motto (“Fortune favors the brave”), a head of college who loves chess, and a personal trajectory as grandmasters who chose to make Yale their next move.
In their semester-plus together at Yale, Checa and Guo — whose paths had crossed previously in tournament play on the chess circuit — have been a high-octane duo on the Yale College Chess Club, promoted a stronger chess-playing community in New Haven, and forged a strong bond as friends.
At Yale, they say, a culture of community and excellence has given them a space to discover more about themselves as individuals, as well.
“Arthur and I knew each other long before we got here,” Checa explained recently, as the bright, winter sun streamed into a Trumbull study room. “We were on the same path, but at different points on the journey.”
“I remember we played each other in Texas once, in the second round of a tournament,” said Guo. “I lost pretty terribly that day! But we’ve played several times since then.”
Checa, left, and Guo had known each other from the chess circuit prior to their experience as Yale classmates.
As players, Guo is more intentional and Checa more intuitive.
When Checa plays, his long arms are relaxed as he stares at the chessboard. He’ll rub his chin every so often. Guo is more of a talker — a nationally ranked college debater, in fact. He’s prone to sneak the occasional smiling glance at his opponent, run a hand through his dark hair, or gently rest his right hand on the table.
They note that the world of competitive chess is tightly knit and generates its own brand of intensity. “Many people know about it, but few really understand it,” Guo said.
Added Checa: “The thing about chess and student life is that few people can truly balance it. Very few grandmasters can do academics and chess.”
Checking on Checa
Checa’s chess story began when he was four years old. He grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a village on the Hudson River, where his father taught him and his older sister the basics of how chess pieces move.
By age seven, he was playing competitively; by age nine, he had played in the World Youth Chess Championship in Brazil; by 11, he’d won the New York State Chess Championship. He earned his grandmaster title in 2018 and it was approved by the International Chess Federation (it goes by the French acronym FIDE) in early 2019, when he was 17.
“There’s a real sense of personal accountability in chess,” Checa said. “It’s a double-edged sword. When you win, there’s no one to congratulate but yourself. But when you lose, there’s not a bad bounce of the ball that you can blame.”
By age seven, Nicolas Checa was playing competitive chess.
In 2020 and 2021, Checa earned Samford Fellowships, given to exceptional American chess players under the age of 25. While attending Yale, he’s won three Connecticut state chess championships, in 2021, 2022, and 2024.
“It was a challenge, a creative outlet, and something I really enjoyed,” he says of his early playing days. “It evolves over time. When you’re younger, there’s more of an emphasis on creativity and style. Then as you move up there’s more emphasis on precision than on flair. I find that as I get older, I’m less theoretical about it. I play, in some cases, a bit riskier than before.”
Throughout his life, Checa has sought ways to integrate other interests and experiences into his world, alongside chess. As a teenager, for example, he spent a summer living in Washington, D.C., and working as a page in the U.S. Senate.
He also took a gap year before starting his Yale undergraduate studies.
“I spent some of that year focused on chess,” Checa said. “I concluded, ultimately, that I wanted to have a broader set of life experiences, not constrained by 64 squares.”
Guo’s gambit
Guo, meanwhile, credits the local library in his hometown of Atlanta with introducing him to chess when he was five years old. He was returning a book when he noticed people playing chess in the corner. A few months later, he was playing in his first tournament.
“I got really good, really fast,” he said. “Chess is extremely self-reenforcing when you win. It’s very addicting. When you start seeing wins, you want more.”
Arthur Guo, shown here with his father, began playing chess as young as age five.
He got them. Over the next decade, Guo stacked up an impressive nine national championships and three international gold medals, including back-to-back Denker Tournament of High School Champions wins, in 2022 and 2023, and a championship, at age 15, at the 2021 National Open (an exceptionally competitive tournament that included 22 grandmasters and 29 international masters).
Guo was an international master at age 12 and a grandmaster at age 17.
He also took a year off from chess, starting the summer before his junior year of high school. After 10 years of riding the emotional waves of success and disappointment on a world stage, he needed a chance to step back and rekindle his love of the game.
During this period, Guo joined his school debate team and began to process the highs and lows of his chess life. He saw more clearly the sacrifices his family had made in order for him to travel the world playing chess.
Before long he was eager to begin playing again.
“Not thinking about chess for about a year made me rethink my standards and what I enjoyed about the game,” Guo wrote in an article in Chess Life magazine. “After a few months, I began to miss the adrenaline. I missed sitting down to adjust my pieces, focusing, and immersing myself in every nuance of a position for hours on end. I missed the feeling of winning and proving myself wrong. I just missed chess.”
When it came time to consider life beyond high school, Guo, like Checa, decided to search for a sense of competition and community at Yale.
“Chess taught me to think deeply and evaluate situations,” Guo said. “It taught me what I was missing: being able to share my story and connect to people.”
Game recognizes game
Despite their remarkable success, Guo and Checa remain amazingly humble, said D.S. Fahmeed Hyder, a professor of biomedical engineering at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at the Yale School of Medicine, and head of Trumbull College.
Hyder met Checa first, at an evening study break in 2023, several months after his appointment as Trumbull’s head, a role that involves nurturing the social, cultural, and educational life of Yale College students. During that conversation, Checa chatted about his classes, his internship at a Manhattan financial institution, and, in passing, about his interest in chess. It was only later that Hyder discovered the full story of Checa’s chess bona fides.
Several months later, Hyder learned Trumbull’s incoming class would include a second grandmaster, Guo.
This fairly well blew Hyder’s mind. As a child, he had learned to play chess at a refugee camp after his family fled civil strife in war-torn Bangladesh. Hyder, whose mother taught him the game with a chess set made from scrap wood, carries within him a deep fondness for the game and a respect for those who play it well — including Checa and Guo.
“These are two amazingly well-put-together young men,” Hyder said. “They complement one another. Nico is older, and Arthur looks up to him. But as Nico points out, this is Arthur’s time, because chess at their level has such a short window.”
When Guo first got to campus, he reached out to Checa to help him get the lay of the land. Checa already knew Guo was due to arrive, of course — as did most of the Yale chess-playing community.
Guo soon joined Checa on the Yale College Chess Club, which has weekly meetings and takes part in regular matches against other schools. (Yale founded the first American college chess club in 1857; the current chess club on campus has a recorded history that goes back to 1885.)
Meanwhile, Checa and Guo are also active in outreach efforts to promote chess in their respective hometowns and in New Haven.
“In terms of grandmasters around the nation who are college age and pursuing academics, there are probably fewer than 10 of them,” said Max Lu, a teammate in the chess club, FIDE international master, and first-year student at Berkeley College.
“For Yale to have two of them? That’s incredibly rare,” Lu added. “And they make a really good team. They’re great to train against and bounce ideas off of.”
In their non-chess lives as students, Checa is majoring in economics and plans to pursue a career in finance. Guo is leaning toward a similar focus on economics and math.
They said chess has helped them navigate their studies — but perhaps not in ways that are most obvious.
“We get that question a lot,” Guo said. “There is a natural assumption that if you’re good at chess you’re very smart at all these other things. But the hard skills you learn in chess aren’t really transferable. It’s the soft skills — preparation, overcoming setbacks, going for a goal — that help the most.”
Being surrounded by passionate students excelling in all disciplines has been an eye-opener, as well, they said. Game recognizes game.
“I’ve had a great four years here,” Checa said. “I’ve met a lot of great people with different interests, people I wouldn’t have anticipated meeting. They may not understand the ins and outs of competitive chess, but they’re driving to be the best in their respective areas, whether it’s science research, math, or sports.”
Next moves
As their lone year together on campus wends toward an end, Yale’s undergraduate grandmasters have gained new perspectives on the game they love and its place in their present and future.
For Guo, chess is akin to jazz, full of improvisation, feeling, and expression. Through his friendship with Checa and other, older students, he’s seen that you can do big things without turning your life into a runaway train.
“Basically, everyone you meet here is like that — reflective and introspective about their achievements, but also very chill,” he said.
Meanwhile, Checa is excited for his future in finance, with chess as a treasured leisure pursuit.
“Most of my chess playing now is online, for fun,” he said. “It’s almost exclusively about personal enjoyment, including when I run into someone who’s better than me. That’s fun.”
