PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Twelve-year-old Tessa Wong stares down at her chessboard with an intense and quiet focus. Chess has been a big part of the seventh-grader’s life — she’s played since she was 4 — but this game may be the toughest and most memorable yet.
Standing across Wong’s board is 23-year-old Evgeny Shtembuliak, a Ukrainian grandmaster ranked 191st in the world by the International Chess Federation who escaped his home country shortly after the Russian invasion. From March 26 to 27, he visited Palo Alto to help sharpen the chess skills of local kids.
During this particular game, the 12-year-old gets a good lesson in chess sportsmanship and strategy. A dozen or so moves into their game, the grandmaster checkmates Wong. She smiles quickly through her mask as her king falls down on the board alongside the other silver and gold pieces.
“I’m surprised I lasted as long as I did,” said Wong, who said she’s training in part to chip away at the male-dominated sport. “I need to look more and know what he’s planning next. He’s very good. I fell into a couple of his traps.”
While the last few weeks have been tumultuous and chaotic for Shtembuliak, on this particular Sunday morning he’s calm and friendly toward the group of kids he’s teaching.
The students, who span in age from 7 to 16, are given pointers by the Ukrainian chess player as he takes turns playing each one in a semi circle of boards at Palo Alto’s Foothills Tennis and Swimming Club. In one instance, he tells a younger child to slow down a bit when making moves. On another board, Shtembuliak shows a child how he could easily checkmate them and gives them another chance.
“What I like the most is when people get that ‘Aha!’ moment,” said Shtembuliak, 23. “They’ve been playing chess and they saw that something was true but then they realized it was not true. When people learn and they get it, they get that nice feeling. That is very rewarding, especially with kids.”
Shtembuliak was also able to bring along another fellow Ukrainian chess player and friend of his, Nadiia Salakh. The University of Missouri student left her home of Kakhovka in January after Russian troops started to amass at the border of her country.
The turmoil in Ukraine that has rocked Salakh and Shtembuliak’s worlds also nearly sidelined the Palo Alto chess camp, half of the proceeds of which are going toward aid in Ukraine.
Shtembuliak had plans to visit Palo Alto since the start of the year. He was in Kyiv when Russia started its invasion on Feb. 24, awakened by bombs that went off at 5 a.m. He spent the next couple of nights with his girlfriend in a windowless bathroom, thinking it would be safest place. Along with a friend, Shtembuliak then journeyed to a rural part of the Kyiv, but that only proved to be a temporary solution.
“We figured it was getting a lot more dangerous there. You could hear the sounds (of bombs). You never know. Is it our jets or their jets?” he said.
“It’s not very nice,” he adds with a dark chuckle.
Shtembuliak then got to the western border of Ukraine. While all men in Ukraine between 18 and 60 have been banned from exiting the country, he said he was able to leave by presenting paperwork that excluded him from military service. On March 10, Shtembuliak reached Slovakia and then traveled to Poland before reaching California on March 23.
Although Shtembuliak was able to enter the U.S. with a green card, he had to part ways with his girlfriend and mother, who are still in Poland and are currently trying to get to America. His trip in California, he said, may be brief. Wherever his girlfriend and mother end up, he’ll follow. Right now, there are many unknowns.
“We’ll see,” said Shtembuliak about future plans. “I’m not really sure.”
The invasion of Ukraine, which has led to Western businesses pulling out of Russia, has even reached the international chess world. On March 21, the International Chess Federation suspended Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin from competition after the top-ranked player expressed support for the invasion on social media.
“He’s a great player but not a great person,” Shtembuliak said about Karjakin. “I don’t think he should be able to play.” (According to Shtembuliak, he played against the Russian chess player when he was 9. He lost.)
The Ukrainian player was born in Odessa and lived a majority of his life in the nearby city of Chornomorsk. He started learning chess after his mother brought him to a local club when he was 6 and he went on to enjoy a star-studded career in his youth. In 2007, he won the country’s chess championship for his age group and later placed second in multiple European Chess Championship games. In 2019, he earned the title of grandmaster, the highest title in chess.
In Februrary 2021, Shtembuliak dropped out of Texas Tech University and has since started his own business, where he teaches other chess players and also gives chess coaches lesson plans and strategies. He said he finds the mentorship aspect of chess a lot more fun than competing.
One of Shtembuliak’s students, 16-year-old Palo Alto High School student Kyle Cromwell who helped organize the weekend chess camp, said the Ukrainian chess player has helped him majorly improve his game. He also said he can hardly believe what Shtembuliak is going through.
“It’s definitely a really sad situation,” Cromwell said. “I can’t imagine having to leave my home and leave everything behind.”
