Newsletter Issue 4 – Chess for Unity

March 2024 Issue 4

Editors: NM Derek Jin & FM Arthur Xu

Chess for Unity

Chess In the Schools and Its Collaboration with Chess for Unity

An Interview with Will Staso, Chess in The Schools Manager of College Bound

By Derek Jin and Arthur Xu

Feb. 5, 2024

Summary

Since 1986, Chess In the Schools (CIS) has been focused on making chess accessible to underserved youths in New York City. Many of CIS employees have been with the organization since 2000. It is wonderful to watch kids grow and build a great chess community.
Chess In the Schools’ chess efforts have five components: In-school program, free scholastic tournaments, the Teacher Training Institute, the College Bound Program, and the Summer Camps.
Over 500,000 students in New York City have taken part in the activities organized by Chess In the Schools. CIS is hoping to further expand its alumni network and help more people to benefit from chess.
Chess In the Schools is seeing a chess boom in New York City, which is consistent with the national trend.
Chess In the Schools highly values the superb quality of lessons offered by Chess for Unity coaches and hopes to continue the collaboration with Chess for Unity.

Will: Thanks for everything you guys do for us!

Derek: Thank you so much for offering this interview. First, can you briefly explain the mission and history of Chess In the Schools?

Will: Yes, I certainly can. So, I’m rocking my Chess In the Schools hoodie right here. You can see the start date. 1986. We’ve been around for some time, and we are a pretty cool organization. And something else that I like about the organization before I get to the mission is that we really hang around. We have people who have been there since, like, before the year 2000. So, people, people really hang out with us and stay for the whole thing. And it’s nice to see the growth of Chess in the Schools students. I’ve been in working for chess in school since 2015.

So, I think I’m coming up on my 10th year next around. I’ve seen a lot of students just really grow. I’ve taught a student sixth grade and now I’ve seen them in college. It blows my mind that I remember this kid in sixth grade just messing around and now here they are taking these super high-level courses.

The official Chess in the Schools Mission Statement is right from our website: Chess In the Schools fosters the intellectual and social development of low-income youth through chess education. We really like to highlight intellectual and social development of students because we think chess is just a really nice gateway to help students. It’s an intellectual game. We also really like to highlight the social aspect of what we do.

It’s nice to create a sense of community within Chess In the Schools and Chess In the Schools does a really good job of creating this community for students. And, for staff who work there, to feel part of something and to watch their work. I see these kids in their sixth grade and now they’re off in college.

Derek: It’s remarkable what Chess In the Schools has done for building the community. Could you please tell me what programs you offer, such as afternoon programs, summer camps, and tournaments?

Will: There are five main things that we do. We have our in-school program where we send Chess In the Schools instructors into New York City public schools to teach chess as it’s your regular class. You know, you’re a student, you have math, social studies, and then the chess instructor comes in and does chess. So that’s one part.

We go into the schools, and we focus on third grade for elementary and sixth grade for middle school. But we also work with the school and give them what they’re able to give us. So that’s one part of our program, sending instructors into schools and teaching chess.

Tournaments are another huge thing of what we do, and it’s probably one of my favorite things that we do. Every Saturday or most Saturdays out of the school year, we’ll host totally free scholastic tournaments to NYC kids. It’s not limited to NYC. We have kids come from other states to play in our tournaments. And that’s a lot of fun. It’s four rounds. Kids get two and a half points or more. You’ll get a medal. We have a big award

ceremony. You get to travel all around the city and, and just play chess. And, you know, I, I can rave on and on about how much I love competitive sports. I think chess does a really good job of hitting the competitive aspect that youth need. All right, so that’s two.

We do something called TTI, which is Teacher Training Institute. And that is where we train regular teachers in schools to teach chess so they can set up their own chess programs in schools. That one’s super cool.

What I work for now is the College Bound Department, where we work with high schoolers between ninth and 12th grade. We follow them all throughout high school, supporting their, their chess growth, as well as their social, emotional growth. And we help them with the whole college process. You know, that’s a big process. We follow them through the whole process there.

Finally, we have some summer programs where we like to tone it down a little bit during the summer because we have a crazy school year, but we do offer programs this summer. We’ll have chess camps. We’ll run online chess tournaments this summer, and we’ll run cultural excursions and cultural events for our college bound students during the summer, as well as chess activity and things like that.

We have five main different departments for Chess In the Schools. Thank you.

Arthur: Thank you for sharing. That’s quite a lot of programs. And I’m sure you guys are very, very popular among the students. I

know that over 500,000 students in New York City have taken part in Chess In the Schools. Can you tell me more about what kind of impact Chess In the Schools has made on the life of youth players who took part in these programs? Do you have any examples of students who benefit from the chess education that Chess In the Schools offers?

Will: We do now, especially because right now we’re really trying to build up our alumni network: either they played in tournaments, they were taught by our teachers at Chess In the Schools, or they joined the College Bound Program.

Now we have an alumni program. We hear so many stories of people graduating, and they’ll come back like 10, 15 years later and be like, I used to play in those tournaments, that was so much fun. They’ll just go on and on about how much chess has done for them. I think it’s just such a good game that it just hits so many of the bases that young minds need to hit.

You know, you got strategy, patience, and you got like winning and losing and how to navigate that. And then you get to the competitive aspect. And, and it just really hits a lot of key bases for, for a young mind.

It’s super nice to see students growing up and being able to reflect and feel chess was awesome. We have a lot of kids who will play heavy in elementary school and then take a break in middle school or high school. But then they’ll always come back to it. Chess has a lot of these like life skills that a lot of people can take from it. Especially the winning, losing part.

Arthur: Recently there’s been like a chess boom. There’s like over 10 million members on chess.com. Tens of millions of games have played. Do you see a similar chess boom in New York City, in the youth population, and Chess In the Schools?

Will: Yeah, I think we do. Especially since we had that crazy COVID time, right? Our tournaments got super small. And then it’s nice to just see them get built back up again. And now we’re just like hitting these big numbers again. We were just shy of 500 kids last week in Queens or last Saturday in Queens. Kids are like coming back and getting into it. You don’t really think of chess as a team game, but it really is. Especially if you’re going in with your homies, your school, or people that you’re just friends with. Even with your opponents, let’s go over the game. We’ll see how it went. I think it’s super unique in that time. And it’s hitting a boom now. It’s a good time to be a chess player. Although I think it’s always a good time to be a chess player. The good thing about chess is that anyone can play chess, right?

Arthur: We, Chess4unity, have been collaborating with you guys for more than like two years now. Yeah. I think three and a half. We’re very glad to have this opportunity to share our passion for chess. I was wondering what your thoughts are about our collaboration. Do you have any suggestions for our future collaboration with Chess in the Schools?

Will: I really enjoyed the Friday lessons. I personally. But I have a newborn baby, so I can’t attend the Friday lessons. But I always encourage the students to go. And y’all teach such good lessons. You really do. You get into the nitty gritty. You’re able to field questions from the chat and ask them critical questions on critical positions. And I think y’all lessons just really hit a nice spot. They’re relatable. And they’re super quality. I really am blown away by the quality of the lessons. You guys have these big databases. You’re able to pull up position after position after position. And really, really get into the nitty gritty behind the thought process of it. And I really, I really love that. I just love that we’re able to offer our students your guys’ lessons. Like, I really, it’s such a nice weight off my shoulders. We really value your guys’ lessons. We really, really do. We’re very, very glad I have these lessons every Friday to kind of share, share interest. Yeah.

Arthur/Derek: Thank you so much for the interview. And we really appreciate the partnership.

Will: Arthur and Derek. Thanks for, thanks for having me. Thanks for providing the quality lessons. I hope we can continue doing these lessons. I hope they’re convenient for you. I think the Zoom is a good format, especially for the chess lessons. Zoom is super good because you can just pull up your database. Boom, boom, position, position, position. I hope we can keep this going for a nice long time. Thank you so much.

Read the interview article in a PDF file!

March 10, 2024

The mindset and multiple perspectives: An interview with FM Vincent Tsay

By Arthur Xu

On March 10th, 2024, I interviewed FM Vincent Tsay, who co-founded Chess for Unity with me four years ago. FM Vincent Tsay is a freshman at Washington University in St Louis. He plans to embark on his career journey in the field of law. Vincent started learning chess at nine and won the gold medal in the U12 section at the World Cadet Chess Championship in 2017. He has earned three IM norms and hopes to reach the rating requirement soon for becoming an International Master.

Though I have known Vincent since 2016, we never talked about how he felt about chess and its impact on him. I was not surprised that he mentioned the focus and drive chess has taught him. However, I was impressed by his reflection on how chess has taught him to see things from multiple perspectives and take responsibility for his actions. At the end of the interview, I asked him to share his thoughts on chess education and what chess can bring to all students, especially those from under-resourced backgrounds in K-12 schools.

This interview was conducted in March of 2024. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Chess has shaped the mindset of FM Vincent Tsay, which helps him navigate his future career in law. The self-discipline, focus, and drive he gained from studying and playing chess for years have translated to many things in his life. Among the things chess has taught him, the most remarkable lesson he learned was to take responsibility for his actions.

Vincent: If you lose the game somewhere, you along the way, you made a mistake, you have to analyze that and take responsibility and try to conquer that for the next time you play. And I think that that mindset has been very helpful to take responsibility for my career, my schoolwork, and things along that nature. Take that responsibility, learn from it and do better next time.

Another remarkable component of the mindset he has developed from chess training was seeing things from multiple perspectives. Our society is culturally, racially, linguistically, religiously diverse. A story has two sides. Thus, people may understand and interpret it differently. Vincent used the concept of prophylaxis in chess to explain how he has fostered the mindset skill of seeing things from multiple perspectives.

Vincent: Because in chess, you’re not only looking at your own ideas, your own moves, but also what your opponent’s going to do next. That’s equally as important. You know, players like Karpov are really great at doing that prophylaxis. That’s what we call it in chess.

And it’s the same thing with everything outside of chess, where you have to look at the variables and what factors are going in. And it also helps you interact with people who are different than you. Because you can try to understand both sides and reason through the logic.

I appreciate Vincent’s thoughts on seeing things from multiple perspectives, which is so critical, not only for us to strategize our plans and make decisions in life but also for us to celebrate and embrace diversity, transform our society into a more equal, inclusive one, and deepen our understandings of diversity. Our conversations about the mindset led to my next interview question. I wondered how he thought chess had impacted his choice of career pathway.

Vincent: Oh, it’s been everything. I think the main reason why I chose law is because of chess, which I tell a lot of people. But it’s surprising at first because the connection is not immediate, immediately obvious, right? We see a lot of chess players, our peers go into math, science. computer science, particularly, going that quantitative route. But the law route, and I’m also studying philosophy in college, so the philosophy and law connection with chess is not that obvious.

Vincent: In chess, you know, we have the tournament. But, you know, behind the scenes, there’s a lot of work that we put into. And the same thing with law. We see the trial as the final destination, but hours and hours of research, of discovery that goes into this. So, the preparation aspect is also quite interesting.

One of the things he loves the most about the field of law is the dynamic. “And in law, you know, a factual change of the fact pattern could impact the way the jury and judge view the case. So, it’s always changing. It’s always dynamic”.

In a chess game, we often face a similar situation of dynamics, in which chess players must keep adjusting their plans and strategizing the next moves.

As a college student studying philosophy, Vincent has an interesting observation about philosophy and chess. In his view, we ask questions and try searching for better answers in philosophy and chess. “…the constant inquiry is what ties everything together”.

To end our interview, I asked Vincent how he felt about leading Chess for Unity, how leading it impacted him, and how he thought about the influence Chess for Unity has on scholastic chess players.

Vincent: It definitely did bring an extra meaning to life in the sense of why I am doing chess. And I loved teaching with Chess in the Schools. I think that that was probably one of my favorite programs that we did. The 3rd Saturday Tournament was a consistent bedrock in our program.

I think we definitely were on the right track. And I love the way you’re interviewing people. I think you’re taking Chess for Unity to the next level. And I look forward, definitely look forward to seeing how far under your leadership now that we can scale this and make even greater impact.

Arthur: Thank you. I also really enjoyed our partnership with Chess in the Schools in the past few years. I feel being a part of the chess community is very fulfilling.

Arthur: We’ve been partnered with Chess in the Schools for a couple of years now. We teach free lessons to low- income students through the partnership. I was just wondering about chess education. How do you think chess education might have impacted these students? And how important do you think chess education is?

Vincent: That’s a great question. I think I will talk about chess in the schools in general. …I have been a part of Chess in the Schools ever since the beginning of my chess journey. I began by playing in Chess in the School’s tournaments. So, for me, it’s also a personal thing. It has had a pretty big impact, especially during the beginning years of my career. And I think they do an amazing job of connecting communities with chess. It’s the center point connecting people from different backgrounds that have an interest in chess.

And I personally think chess education is indispensable. I think all schools should have it. And this is even speaking outside of chess. Chess in the Schools, just schools in general, like primary schools, elementary schools, I think there should always be, at least a basic level of chess instruction to see if students are interested.

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