Chess Experts

Enrollment is now open for the spring 2009 Chess in Education Certificate Online Courses. The semester begins January 12, 2009. If you miss that deadline, you can sign up for the second 8-week semester, which begins March 9, 2009. You earn three undergraduate or graduate credits per course. In the spring of 2008, I had 38 students. In the fall of 2008, I had 37 students. Spring 2009 looks to be the busiest yet, as I already have 33 students and registration is still open. I am pleased the courses are popular!

 First of all, I would like to apologize for not updating my blog for quite a while. After not blogging after one tournament, when you think about blogging again you have to do two tournaments, and now I have played too many tournaments to really recap! So, I will instead start anew from two days ago.

Two days ago I did a simultaneous exhibition as well as a lecture on my game against Renier Gonzalez at the University of Florida. After I did the lecture, which I think was ok, I started the simul. The rules for the simul were that there could be no players rated higher than 1800 and that there would be a maximum of 25 players. I also gave each player two passes, in case they weren’t yet sure where to move.

On Saturday, December 6th, Dallas Destiny (a team comprised of UTD students) won the US Chess League for the second year in a row. I watched the Destiny's matches in part because three of the four players competing in the finals for Dallas were current (IM Marko Zivanic) or former (FM Igor Shneider and WFM Bayaraa Zorigt) students of mine in the Chess in Education Certificate Online Courses. Congrats to Dallas Destiny.

Over Thanksgiving break (November 26-30), I wrote three reports for Chess Life Online about The University of Texas at Dallas Invitational. Although I took hand-written notes when I watched players in post mortems, once at home I relied on the Chess Games tab of the MonRoi Web site. 

This posting is Part Three of my review of J. Bosch & S. Giddins (Eds.), The chess instructor 2009. Alkmaar, The Netherlands: New in Chess. Part One was posted on Monday, November 2nd and Part Two on November 9th. In Part Three, I pick out some interesting guidelines and quotations from the chapter Alexander Vaisman: Honoured Trainer of the Ukraine. Vaisman begins by discussing God-given talent for chess. In his opinion, some children have that gift and others do not. 

Over the past four days I have been promoting chess in education at the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) annual conference in Dallas, Texas (November 12-14) and at the Turkey Tournament (1st through 12th grade, November 15) in Fairview, Texas. At TAGT, I was part of The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) vendor booth.

This posting is Part Two of my review of J. Bosch & S. Giddins (Eds.), The chess instructor 2009. Alkmaar, The Netherlands: New in Chess. Part One  was posted on Monday, November 2nd. On November 2nd, I reviewed Van Wijgerden’s chapter, one of sixteen in The Chess Instructor 2009. Ten of the chapters are about training players who have lots of tournament experience and, in some cases, already have FIDE titles.

Quoting from the Sloan Creek Middle School (Fairview, Texas) News:

"Sloan Creek Chess Club will be presenting a USCF chess tournament on November 15th. This tournament is open to the scholastic public. . . .The Turkey Tournament will also host the famous Dr. Alexey Root, 1989 U. S. Women's Chess Champion and author of children's educational books, present at 11:30 to sign autographs! Dr. Root will have a few of her educational books available for sale. This will be open free to the public.

Two of my students won $500 Undergraduate Scholar Research Awards. Both students will be researching important topics in college chess. Read the press release

Amy Michelle Lehman is a current student in my online course ED 4358, and Bayaraa Zorigt took ED 4358 in fall of 2007. Amy and Bayaraa both plan to take ED 4359 in spring of 2009.

An important new book for chess teachers, coaches, and parents has just been published by New in Chess. Titled The Chess Instructor 2009, it is edited by Jeroen Bosch and Steve Giddins. Unlike my own Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators and Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving, The Chess Instructor 2009 assumes that the adult reading the book already knows how to play chess. In contrast, my books give basic chess instruction (such as chess rules and algebraic notation) to help the non-chess player who wishes to utilize chess in an educational setting.

On Halloween The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) defeated the University of Belgrade (UB) 12.5 to 3.5 in the third annual Transatlantic Cup match. The match started late, because University of Belgrade had already switched to standard time.

My third book will be published in March of 2009. Go to http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=F2654P

Then look at the cover for Read, Write, Checkmate: Enrich Literacy with Chess Activities. If you recognize the cover model with the green shirt, which avid MonRoi blog readers should be able to do, please put his name in the Comments section for this blog posting.