U.S. Chess Trust

2008 Chess Olympiad Kicks Off Today! (Dresden, Germany Nov. 12-25, 2008)

The U.S. Men’s Team

This year the United States has the strongest team ever in the men’s division. Check out the details below!

GM Gata Kamsky (Age 34)

On the Top Board - GM Gata Kamsky is the United States highest-rated player - FIDE Rating 2729.  Find out more…

Remember, as we previously reported, Kamsky has a match against Topalov, which is scheduled to begin the day after the Olympiad ends.  According to the USCF - “Whether that match will take place as planned remains to be seen, but the dates and location of Lvov, Ukraine have been guaranteed by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.”

GM Hikaru Nakamura (Age 20)

On Board 2 - GM Hikaru Nakamura follows Kamsky with a FIDE Rating of 2704.  Hikaru is the youngest member of the U.S. Men’s team.  Find out more…

GM Alexander Onischuk (Age 33)

On Board 3 - GM Alexander Onischuk comes in with a FIDE Rating of 2644.  Find out more…

GM Yury Shulman (Age 33)

On Board 4 - GM Yury Shulman, automatically qualified for the Olympiad by winning the 2008 U.S. Chess Championship.  He goes to the Olympiad with a FIDE Rating of 2616.  Find out more…

GM Varuzhan Akobian (Age 24)

On Board 5 - GM Varuzhan Akobian, who is 24 yrs old will turn 25 around the middle of the tournament.  Akobian was born in Armenia and has a FIDE Rating of 2606.  Find out more…

Men’s Team Captain: IM John Donaldson

The U.S. Women’s Team 

IM Irina Krush (Age 24)

Top Board - IM Irina Krush - Irina has a participated in four Chess Olympiads!  She goes to this Olympiad with her highest-ever olympiad FIDE Rating—2470.  Irina was born in the Ukraine. Irina outrated Anna Zatonskih and may take the top board.  Find out more…

WGM Anna Zatonskih (Age 30)

On Board 2 - Anna is the current U.S. Women’s Champion.  She goes to the Olympiad with a FIDE Rating of 2440. In 2006, she played board one for the women’s team.  Anna was also born in the Ukraine, and has also participated in four Chess Olympiads - however, she represented Ukraine in her first two trips to the Olympiad.  Find out more…

WGM Rusudan Goletiani (Age 28)

On Board 3 - WGM Rusudan Goletiani, three-time World Youth Chess champion. This is here 2nd Olympiad!  She goes to the Olympiad with a FIDE Rating of 2359.  Rusudan is a native of the republic of Georgia.  Find out more…

WGM Katerina Rohonyan (Age 24)

On Board 4 -  WGM Katerina Rohonyan, a newcomer to the Olympiads.  She is also a Ukrainian-American. Katerina goes to Dresden with a FIDE Rating of 2334.  Find out more…

WFM Tatev Abrahamyan (Age 20)

On Board 5 - WFM Tatev Abrahamyan,  was selected for the Olympiad in part because of the age bonus.  She gets 30 bonus rating points because she is 20 years old.  She goes to the Olympiad with a FIDE Rating of 2286.  Find out more…

Women’s Team Captain: Michael Khodarkovsky

Women’s Team Coach:  GM Gregory Kaidanov

Good Luck to all of the Players!!!   Stay tuned for more coverage!

Click Here to visit the official web site of the 2008 Olympiad— www.dresden2008.de

(Press Release) 152 Nations at the Chess Olympiad 2008 in Dresden  - Highest level of registration in history of all chess olympiads

It’s going to be the biggest chess olympiad of all ages. After the final closing of the registration list on September the 19th there are more than 2.000 active participants announced at the chess olympiad from November the 12th till November the 25th. The previous appraisal of 1.500 active participants was now outbid.

With 152 registered nations Dresden surpasses the previous Olympiad 2006 in Turin with 7 more countries. The participants distribute themselves to 275 teams, therefrom 156 in the maintournament including the second team of Germany and the teams of the deaf, correspondence chess players and blind persons. 119 women teams are starting.

The chess olympiad is after the Summer Olympics the sporting event with the most participating nations worldwide. With these high numerary the demand is rising too: The International Congress Centre has to admit the players, the arbiters, organizers and official persons, as well as up to 1.500 visitors per diem. Among all nations Russia is the favourite, but almost every world top player is going to attend the Games.

Dresden is also making history in the field of rules. The tournament in autumn comes up with numerous rule changes and is deemed to be the chess olympiad of reformation. Among other changes the player has to sit clocklike on his seat or he is loosing immediately the match. It is not allowed to agree a draw before the 30th move is done.

Additional Information:

Click Here for Interesting Facts & Tidbits
Click Here to Learn More About Dresden
Click Here for Tournament Venue

GM Jaan Ehlvest wins the 2008 Pan American-Continental Championship & Qualified for the 2009 FIDE World Cup in Khanty- Mansyisk, Russia!

Replay Round 9 Match between Ehlvest (W) vs. Shabalov (B)!  

Congratulations GM Jaan Ehlvest!

Click Here to Replay the Games for the 2008 Pan American Continental Championship! 

The start of a new chess club, U.S. Chess Trust support, inspired new chess players…

Check out the article written by a teacher, Lisa Suhay of Ryan Academy!  This article will run locally on the Virgina Pilot.

We hope that they can submit some of their chess essays for our ChEssays Web Page!

Games Teachers Play by Lisa Suhay

I am a slow learner. It took me the last 43 years to figure out what I was put on Earth to do with all my oddball qualities, unique experiences and quirky insights. I found my calling via a phone call from the blue asking me to teach high school English this Fall.

Each day at a small private school in Norfolk I teach four courses: 12th Grade British Literature; 9th grade composition; journalism and creative writing.

Having lived aboard a sailboat at one time provided two good teaching mantras: “Sometimes you have to go left to go right” and “You cannot control the wind, only adjust your sails.”

In I sailed with lesson plans on Beowulf, Chaucer, creative writing prompts galore. I ran straight into the rocky classroom where students lights had been burned out by: ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, lack of self-esteem, rampant hormones and Senioritis.

It was time to go left to set things right. Out came my iPod filled with everything from Shakespearean sonnets read by a New York convict in a “Sensitivity through poetry” program to the Lord’s Prayer read in Olde English.

The breakthrough tool, however, was the game of chess. Chess is not a game for “smart people” but a game that enhances people’s smarts. (Please see http://www.quadcitychess.com/benefits_of_chess.html)

It began when I decided to use the game of chess as a way to teach the literature of the Middle Ages and Eleanor of Aquitaine. The thought came into play as I poured over my lesson plans while my husband, Robert, sat playing chess against our four-year-old son, Quin. I thought about how chess is a story that is rewritten with every game. The queen, like Eleanor, is the most powerful piece in the kingdom. Chess could provide fodder for teaching metaphor, allegory and perhaps be a good shield allowing students to explore their emotions without experiencing too much pain.

I went into the classroom with three boards, a set of descriptions of each piece as a character (knight, king, queen, bishop, pawn/soldier, castle/rook) and a very crazy teaching plan.  

Students in all my classes would learn to play. No excuses.

• British Literature students would learn through allegory.
• Composition class would have metaphor exploration.
• Budding journalists would learn to look at stories from all angles.
• Creative writing would dig deepest, exploring parallels between chess and life.

Results were immediate and dramatic.  My discipline problems pretty much evaporated. Students with ADD, ADHD, dyslexia were transformed into chess-a-holics. Those who previously were labeled by themselves and others as least likely to succeed were suddenly winners.

Since we had nearly 40 players we formed the school’s first chess club.  I applied to the U.S. Chess Trust in Walkill, NY and the Virginia Scholastic Chess Association in Richmond for aid in the form of more chess boards.

This week U.S. Chess Trust agreed to supply boards so we can keep all the students in play. The U.S. Chess Trust also featured our school on its national website.

U.S. Chess Trust is a 501c3 charitiy in need of funds so that other schools here in Hampton Roads and across the nation can help public and private schools obtain equipment to form their first chess clubs as we have.

The timetable was: two weeks of learning/playing chess in class mixed with discussion, articles from the Hip-hop Chess Federation which teaches chess for life strategies, video (i.e. Searching for Bobby Fischer, A Lion in Winter and YouTube snippets of speed chess), and lectures from a book called “Birth of the Chess Queen” by Marilyn Yalom.

Then I set them all to the task of writing Chessays (chess essays): “How is chess like life?”

Those essays are piled beside me as I write and from them shines a light so bright it brings tears to my eyes. They told of battles, death of a parent “King”“Queen,” or longing and newly tapped potential.

“I am a pawn in the board of life. My power is limited. A lot of times people see me as the weakest piece, but what they don’t know is someday I will be the strongest. Pieces, known as my family and friends, fall around me but the only thing I can do is move forward,” wrote one 16-year-old. “Like a Raisin in the sun, my dream was deferred. My King had fallen. It felt like the game was over…”

An 18-year-old girl wrote, “Life is not an easy game to play…There is not one smile that is permanent. Love comes and goes. Heartache is a deleterious emotion that can make our ways of thinking very destructive. This is our battle.”

“Chess is like a relationship. You not only have to take pieces, but you must give them also,” wrote a tattoo sportin’, tough talkin’, fist bumpin’ 18-year-old chess wizard.

“Sometimes you have to give up pieces of yourself to get a piece of value from the other person because you have to sacrifice to attain greatness in the long run. And if you play it safe for too long the relationship will turn on you, as will the game of chess. Then before you know it – checkmate.”

It’s chess, but they’re not just playin’ anymore.

Ryan Academy students engrossed in a game of chess.

The U.S. Chess Trust donated chess equipment to the Ryan Academy. Below is a note we received from the Ryan Academy regarding their success with chess!

“”A million thanks! We have had some stunning success thanks to chess. The game has dramatically improved concentration, focus, behavior and has been the basis for our Chessays in writing classes. A series of writing prompts on ‘How chess is like life’ brought out some truly insightful works. Learning and regularly playing the game has been especially beneficial to students coping with ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia and high stress situations in their personal lives.”"

Congratulations to the Ryan Academy for implementing a chess program that supports their students in a positive way! We are proud to support them with our Chess-for-Youth program and look forward to hearing from them again!

Playing chess has proven to help students enhance their creativity, improve their power of concentration, develop and expand critical thinking skills, boost memory and retention, and achieve superior academic performance.

Additionally, chess has been shown to augment problem-solving capabilities, provide cultural enrichment, advance intellectual maturity, and enhance self-esteem. We know that these are qualities that school administrators, parents, and teachers desire for their students.

The U.S. Chess Trust’s Chess-For-Youth program operates under a very simple premise chess makes kids smarter and should be an opportunity available to all students across the country. We can help you establish or continue your chess program! Click here to find out more about the Chess-for-Youth program.

To find out more about the Ryan Academy - Click Here.

We have included an excerpt from a book titled  “Educational Benefits of Chess” by Dr. Robert Ferguson which sheds some light on chess in education. Feel free to download the entire book by clicking on the link at the bottom of the excerpt.

Educational Benefits of Chess by Dr. Robert Ferguson

Chapter I. The Problem

“In modest forms thinking pervades, and to a degree rules, all activities of a human being. Why, then, are we so little concerned with the study of thought processes?” –Wolfgang Kohler

Introduction

There is a pressing need, in the opinion of many educators, leaders, employers, and others, to teach young people how to think.  These studies propose that critical and creative thinking can be taught using chess as the vehicle. My 1987-88 research also asserts that chess can be utilized to develop memory.

There is a very strong contention among both educators and chess aficionados that chess develops a number of valuable skills.

“Chess Makes You Smart” is the upbeat message of the U.S. Chess Federation.

Benjamin Franklin promoted a similar idea in his essay “The Morals of Chess”:

“The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities ofthe mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it,  so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which thereis a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it.  And this we may learn by playing at Chess.”  (Franklin, 1786).

Franklin went on to list these valuable qualities of the mind as:

•  1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action. . . . “If I move this Piece, what will be the advantage or disadvantage of my new situation?”
•  2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chessboard, or scene of action.
•  3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily. . . .
•  And, lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs; the habit of hoping for a favourable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources.

The first official world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz (1889), expressed the value of chess as follows:

“It is almost universally recognised as a healthy mental exercise, which in its effects on the intellectual faculties is akin to that of physical gymnastics on the conservation and development of bodily strength.

Moreover, the cultivation of the game seems also to exercise a direct influence on the physical condition of chessplayers and the prolongation of their lives, for most of the celebrated masters and authors on the game have reached a very old age, and have pre- served their mental powers unimpaired in some instances up to their very last moments.”

Read or Download (PDF): Educational Benefits of Chess by Dr Robert Ferguson

The U.S. Chess Trust is a proud contributor of this event!

This event is shaping up to be a very interesting and exciting event!

GM Ivanov, Alexander & GM Becerra, Julio - both from the USA are just two of the many talented chess players at this event.

The Pan American Continental Championship got off to a good start, but, not without a few mishaps.

The Colombians arrived in the United States and got stuck in an elevator at the Tri Rail station in Boca Raton - prompting the Fire Dept. to rescue them!

Then on Monday Nov. 3rd, the Marriott at Boca Center had a power outage which delayed one of the Rounds leading into late name Games!

The chess players and staff have been great at keeping it together and helping this become a successful and memorable event!

Interest and support has been great!  With people blogging from other countries and the U.S.A. on the tournament’s official website to show their support for their favorite players!

You can check out more details and Live Game coverage at www.ChessEducators.com - Click Here to View the Live Games Blog