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) title 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. Finegold was recipient of the U.S. Chess Trust's Samford fellowship. In addition to filming and streaming chess topics on social media sites, he has been active in giving live tournament commentary, lectures, and writing. He was the grandmaster-in-residence of the Saint Louis Chess Club, and co-founded the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta. 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 U.S. 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 September 2009, he earned