Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is someone you might not have heard of yet, but I’m guessing that you will, and soon.

FM Sandeep Sethuraman is the author of our March cover story on the K-12 Grade Championships, held last December in National Harbor, Maryland. Sandeep scored 6.5/7 to claim clear first in the 11th Grade Championship, and afterwards, he reached out to me to see if he might write something for Chess Life or Chess Life Kids. Perfect timing — I was looking for someone to write about the K-12, and here we are.

At age 15, Sethuraman is rated 2465 USCF, and the 24th rated player under the age of 21. He has earned three IM norms, meaning that once he pushes his FIDE rating over 2400 — he’s 19 points away — he will become an IM.

But Sandeep is more than ‘just’ a chess player. A junior at BASIS Chandler in Chandler, AZ, he is an excellent student, and his non-profit, The Chess Effect, has raised money for foster care children and works to teach children to underprivileged youth.

Today’s guest on "Cover Stories with Chess Life" is one of the authors of our January cover story on the 2022 U.S. Championships, and she is also — breaking news here — starting up a regular column for Chess Life. She is the woman with the purple hair, WGM Tatev Abrahamyan.

Tatev began her chess journey at age eight in Armenia. After winning medals in European youth championships, she moved to America in 2001, and her success continued. She has played in every — or nearly every — U.S. Championship since 2004, with no small amount of success, despite not yet taking home the first place hardware.

Tatev has also been a stalwart member of our international Olympiad teams, including our 2022 team in Chennai, India, which her teammate WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova reported on in our December issue. Tatev scored 7/9 to help Team USA finish in fourth place, just off the medal podium.

Tatev is currently a brand Ambassador for Chessup, a chess smartboard startup from Bryght Labs in Kansas. Long a mainstay of West Coast chess, she is now a Midwesterner, “enjoying” our winters as she makes a move from Kansas City to St. Louis. We’ll ask what it’s like to be thousands of miles from the ocean, and to have to keep her chess level while being a working stiff like the rest of us.

This month’s issue of Chess Life also sees Tatev’s first column on “Getting to Work,” where, at least at first, she will offer a number of “how-tos” for chess improvers looking to work on their game. I’m very excited to see how this all turns out, and to use some of her tips in my own chess practice!

Today’s guest on Cover Stories with Chess Life is one of the authors of our December cover story on the 2022 FIDE Olympiad. She is our Women’s top board, WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova.

Begim, as she is often called, was born in Uzbekistan, and saw chess success at a young age, winning the U12 bronze at the World Youth in 2011. After earning both her WIM title and WGM title in 2015, her success continued, representing her country at the 2016 and 2018 Olympiads, and winning the Uzbek Women’s Championship in 2018.

After coming to America to study at the University of Missouri and play on their chess team, Begim became a fixture in American chess. She competed in the 2021 and 2022 U.S. Women’s Championships, finishing second in 2021 and in the middle of the pack this year, and she held down the top board for the Women’s Olympiad team in Chennai, telling her story to Chess Life readers in our November issue.