Last week in a perceptive piece for the Times, Will Pavia animadverted upon the fact that the USA appears to be actively recruiting top chess grandmasters. Pavia focused on attempts to persuade world-ranked no. 2 Fabiano Caruana to defect from representing Italy, and switch allegiance to the USA.
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Even more indicative has been the effort made to entice the former Philippine grandmaster Wesley So to adopt the stars and stripes. As far as I can see, this enterprise has been successful, and it is not hard to detect the hand of the eminence grise of American chess Rex Sinquefield, behind a prima facie attempt to reconquer the Olympiad gold medal (which they have won five times overall) and the individual world title (last held for American chess by Bobby Fischer).
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