Various Chess News

A button a friend of mine just sent me 🙂

Chess Club Teaches Thinking Skills, Sportsmanship

“Chess is not just another board game with interesting pieces,” says Laurie Erdman. “There are many positive aspects to learning this game. Chess means you have to really use your brain. Strategy is involved, spatial relationships, planning ahead, ethics, and reason. It is a brain developer.”

During Erdman’s first year as parent partnership coordinator at Northwoods Elementary School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, cold weather led to several indoor recess periods for the students. She discovered that many of the children were playing chess to pass the time and enjoying it, so she asked her principal for permission to organize an after-school chess club. Next she brought in the best teacher she knew to be its “coach,” her husband, Jim, who is a high school teacher and a life-long chess player.

…”Chess is a game that can be played all through life, and it is not a matter of people having to play people their own age,” adds Erdman. “It is more about ability. You never get tired of chess. Each game is different. This ancient game remains one that is played around the world by all ages in part because it is competitive and a thinking person’s game.”

Here is the full article.

Chess team defeats rivals to reclaim No. 1
Kim Felder
Issue date: 1/15/07

December was a month of victories for the UTD chess team, which started with individual victories at the Grandmaster Invitational and culminated with a team victory that reclaimed the title of best college chess team in the Western Hemisphere.

Referred to as the “World Series of College Chess,” the Dec. 27-30 Pan American Chess Championship in Washington, D.C. consisted of 24 teams of top players from universities in America, Canada and Peru.

The “B” chess team nabbed first place, while UTD’s “A” team received second place on tiebreaker points. The “A” and “B” teams each achieved five wins, one draw, and went undefeated in the 48 individual games at the championship.

To make the victory all the more notable, the UTD teams defeated their long-time rival, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), who were the victors at the 2005 Pan Am Championship.

By placing first at the tournament, UTD has qualified to compete in the Final Four of Chess competition in March, where they will battle UMBC once more, as well as Miami-Dade College and Duke University.

Here is the full article.

PSA elevates GM Torre to Hall of Fame

THE man considered the pillar of Philippine chess spanning four decades, deservingly receives his own place into the Hall of Fame of the Philippine Sportswriters Association.

The country’s oldest media organization will elevate the highly esteemed Eugene Torre, acclaimed as Asia’s first grandmaster, to its Hall of Fame during the SMC-PSA Annual Awards on Jan. 18 at the Entertainment Hall of the SM Mall of Asia.

The 53-year-old Torre joins an elite list of sports greats honored by the group in the past and among them were golfers Ben Arda and Celestino Tugot, tracksters Lydia de Vega-Mercado and Mona Sulaiman and basketball stars Lauro Mumar and Caloy Loyzaga.

The Filipino grandmaster is one of the 68 awardees to be honored in the special two-hour program (3 to 5 p.m.) showcasing the best and the brightest in local sports during 2006.

Here is the full article.