12/24/2023 – From a very young age, Rita Atkins has been active in the chess community, achieving notable success in various chess tournaments, reaching the title of Women's International Master (WIM) and winning the Hungarian Women's Chess Championship in 1992. She has also been involved in teaching chess and mathematics to school children and youth. In a lengthy interview with Uvencio Blanco, she remarked: "Give it another hundred years, and there will be just as many good female players as male ones".

10/20/2020 – There are 40 living U.S.-born grandmasters listed by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) as playing for the USA. WIM Alexey Root and IM John Daniel Bryant researched their educational backgrounds and careers. They also asked the grandmasters to give advice to today’s high-rated high school players. | Pictured: John Harvard statue at Harvard University | Photo: Jessica Williams

5/2/2020 – US Chess National Master Jerald Times is sheltering-in-place in New York City, the center of the coronavirus pandemic. Times writes about being Director of Chess at Success Academy and describes holistic chess programs that combine music, storytelling, chess and tai chi. WIM Alexey Root interviews Jerald Times. | Photo: Success Academy Charter Schools

4/1/2020 – Although ChessBase is the international standard for top players, it also facilitates teaching chess to groups of children. For the past 15 years, for 10-20 hours per week, US Chess Master Jeff Ashton has taught using ChessBase. Ashton’s Panda Chess Academy transitioned from in-person classes to online instruction, due to his city’s closure of non-essential businesses. WIM ALEXEY ROOT interviews Jeff Ashton.

6/25/2019 – Marco Bode is a German football legend, famous for his fair play and his loyalty to his club, Werder Bremen. Bode is also a passionate chess player who is keen to teach young kids the game and to make chess a subject in schools. Last week, Bode's efforts led 1,000 primary school students to play a huge tournament in the center of Bremen. | Photos: Pascal Simon/ Rainer Woisin

6/10/2018 – Courts have a range of different sentences for young offenders. Community service, custodial sentences and detentions are among the most frequent. A different approach is now being tested in Lethbridge, Canada, where a group of scientists created a program to use chess instead. The program is called "Chess for Life" and so far has been a success. | Pictured: The research team | Photo: Chess for Life

2/5/2018 – On Sunday January 14th 2018, something very unusual happened in England. A chess tournament took place with upwards of 260 players, all of whom were female. The southern semi-final of the ECF National Schools Girls’ Championships was made up of eighty seven separate teams of three. Thirty two schools took part. This may be commonplace in countries such as Turkey, India, the USA and others, but in the UK it is almost unique. IM Andrew Martin has the story. | Photo: Jasmine Andrews

5/20/2017 – In a country as vast as India, peppered with villages all over, economic prosperity is often the difference between folding in on itself or survival. Many villages suffered from rampant illicit gambling and alcoholism. Marottichal was one such, until one day, a man opened a teashop and began teaching everyone chess, and now chess is seen everywhere. BBC reports.

4/23/2017 – In conjunction with the Kasparov Chess Foundation's 15th Anniversary Celebration, the Kasparov Chess Foundation Asia-Pacific proposed five activities as its contribution and four of them came together with a tour of four countries in Asia with the common theme of Chess in Education. Here is an illustrated report by Peter Long

4/12/2017 – The television show 60 Minutes featured the chess program in Franklin County, Mississippi (MS). Over 15 million viewers watched that episode (original air date March 26, 2017), which featured Dr. Jeff Bulington along with his chess-playing students and their proud parents. Bulington’s chess program began in August of 2015 and is sponsored for ten years by an anonymous wealthy benefactor. Here is the report and commentary by Alexey Root.

3/10/2017 – Dr. Chandramallika Basak is one of the leading researchers in the area of working memory and cognitive control, training strategies, cognitive and brain plasticity, aging, and biomarkers of complex skill learning (e.g., video games). She has now begun research on children and chess. Alexey Root attended Dr. Basak’s lecture “Cognitive Benefits of Learning to Play Chess and Other Strategy Games” and reports here.

3/6/2017 – While comparisons between chess and mathematics and chess and science are not new, with greats such as Feynman elaborating, the article here is more than yet another comparison, it is an actual lesson that will appear in high school physics classes in Crete. Enjoy this excellent article by physicist Ioannis Halkias.

3/26/2015 – In yet another example of chess being promoted as an educational tool, the Norwegian Parliament approved a trial to include a one-hour a week chess class in schools for third and fourth grade students. This initiative was presented and promoted by Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen, in a high-profile event, joining similar efforts underway in the UK and Spain.