"Youth Committee Sends Expanded Chicago Proposal to New Leaders"

Read the story and the proposal itself on the ICA website!

"Top Titled Players Endorse ICA's Program for Chicago Public Schools"

Jerry Neugarten reports on his group's proposal to bring free chess instruction to all of Chicago's Title I public schools.  

Bringing the joy of creative thinking to disadvantaged children is one of the greatest things we can do as a community!  Chess education will never be as popular as music education, another medium for prodigies.  And if you'll permit me a bit of heresy, chess education shouldn't be as important as music education.  (I rest my case.)  But I know from personal experience that chess introduced me to certain new ways of thinking that are particularly important in an information economy.

Of course, Chicago will soon have a new mayor, and Chicago Public Schools will soon have a new CEO, so it's hard to say how this proposal will play out.   (Did you know that the outgoing Ron Huberman is only 38 years old?  He probably knows something about developing prodigies....)

Check out the endorsement letter itself: cool signatures!

Original blog entry edited to correct hyperlink errors....any remaining weird hyperlinks are deliberately obscure. :-)

Chess is hard!

Jerry Neugarten, the chair of the Illinois Chess Association's Youth Chess Committee, is putting the finishing touches on the ICA's guide to curricula and study resources for young players.  I pulled out my copy of Irving Chernev's Logical Chess: Move by Move, a classic collection of annotated games for beginners, to see whether it belongs on the list.  It does indeed: it's a fun and instructive read.

But my silicon friend discovered something amazing in the final position of the very first game.  Can you discover it, too, using wetware alone?

 von Scheve - Teichmann, Berlin 1907

Position after 17...Bxf2

White to play resigned

Chernev explains White's resignation: "Black's threat was 18...Qh3+ 19.Nh2 Qxh2#."  ("#" is the abbreviation for "checkmate".)  "As 18.Rxf2 runs into 18...Nxf2#, there was no escape."

NEVER TRUST ANYTHING YOU READ IN A CHESS BOOK!  (This goes double for blogs written by patzers.)  99.9% of the time, the book will be right and you'll discover why your challenge was wrong.  But every so often, you'll discover something cool.