Jesse Kraai (born May 6, 1972) is a chess Grandmaster (GM) living in Baltimore, MD.

[citation needed] He reached GM status in 2007[1] making him the first American-born player to achieve the title since Tal Shaked in 1997.

In 2007, he won the New Mexico chess state championship for the fifth consecutive year.

His dissertation examined the influence of Georg Joachim Rheticus on the development of Copernican theory.

He withdrew from teaching chess for three years to write it.