Chess improvement for beginners and novice players The Importance of Defense in Chess By Susan Polgar We all like to be in a position to attack freely and look for ways to checkmate our opponents. However, we cannot always...
The Chess Tech Evolution
Chess by Shelby Lyman on May 7, 2016 – 12:01 I recall with almost a kind of dread a scene from the late ’60s: an early confrontation between man and machine. The human was John Curdo, a gifted and...
Growing list of chess grants and scholarships
Shelby Lyman on Chess: Candy Is Dandy, but Chess Is Better Sunday, February 28, 2016 (Published in print: Sunday, February 28, 2016) As a kid, the chance to play chess was no less welcome than a free bag of...
Pioneer palaces produced world class players
Shelby Lyman on Chess: Children Were the Key Sunday, February 14, 2016 (Published in print: Sunday, February 14, 2016) The secret of Soviet chess supremacy lay in numbers — particularly of school children actively engaged in chess groups and...
Chess benefits for seniors?
Shelby Lyman on Chess: A Help for Seniors? The notion that games such as chess can be at least a partial antidote to the mental ravages of aging is a common one, and it may be true. The argument...
A World Class Chess Teacher
Shelby Lyman on Chess: A World Class Teacher Sunday, October 25, 2015 (Published in print: Sunday, October 25, 2015) Bobby Fischer had an insatiable drive for chess mastery — his search for knowledge and perfection making him a superb...
Chasing Magnus?
Shelby Lyman on Chess: ‘The Paranoids Are After Me’ Sunday, October 11, 2015 (Published in print: Sunday, October 11, 2015) Magnus Carlsen, the 24-year-old world champion of chess, may be getting the willies. I am reminded of a Bobby...
Chess is much more relevant than you think
Shelby Lyman on Chess: More Relevant Than We Think Sunday, October 4, 2015 (Published in print: Sunday, October 4, 2015) “Chess is the touchstone of intellect,” we are told by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is also an affair...
Chess: The Battlefield of Life
Shelby Lyman on Chess: The Battlefield of Life Column c2251 for release Sept 14 Sunday, September 20, 2015 (Published in print: Sunday, September 20, 2015) Sports are curiously contradictory. They range in character from activities that are pure, or...
Not as easy as people think
Shelby Lyman on Chess: It’s Hardly a Cakewalk Sunday, September 13, 2015 (Published in print: Sunday, September 13, 2015) Few of us will question that life is synonymous with struggle. The humanly contrived competition that we call “sports” raises...