Robert L. Hess is an American chess Grandmaster, competitor, and chess commentator. Hess was born on December 19, 1991, in New York City. He began playing competitive games at age ten, and in the span of five years, he had earned the title of Grandmaster, becoming the youngest in American history.
Hess achieved significant success as a young player. At the 2006 Pan American Youth Championship, he won a gold medal in his age category. Two years later, he finished first in the 2008 U.S. Junior Chess Championship.
In 2009, he reached the final round of the U.S. Chess Championship after eliminating defending champion Yury Shulman. However, Hikaru Nakamura defeated him in the finals.
In 2010, Hess won the Samford Chess Fellowship, an award given annually to the most promising U.S. chess player under 25. This allowed him to continue studying and playing chess professionally. However, he eventually decided to shift his focus towards his studies. He attended Yale University, where he studied history, graduating in 2017. Recently, he has been working as a chess commentator.
Hess also co-founded "The Sports Quotient," a collection of Internet sports statistics, analyses, and opinions provided by college and high-school students nationwide.