** Story Hour with the Grandmasters ** GM Joel Benjamin and GM Arthur Bisguier along with their moderator, Stephen Shutt, entertain and inform their audience by sharing little-known chess anecdotes in this 90 minute video. CLICK HERE!

Welcome to the twelfth issue (Volume 2, Number 9) of the Scholastic Chess Update.  

• Improving Communications with Coaches

• News from Chessville and Others

• Web Site of the Month!

• Knight's Tour

• Coach Certification Update

• Chess & Books with Fred Wilson

To improve communications between the USCF and the scholastic folks throughout the USA, I submitted the State Scholastic Liaison Proposal.  I felt that we might want to take a look at the issue of representation of the scholastic community on the Scholastic Committee and the Council.  Here is a summary of the proposal.

1) All 50 states and DC plus the additional CA group will have a State Scholastic Liaison (formerly known as the State Scholastic Coordinator) who will interact with the Scholastic Council and be on the Scholastic Committee.

2)  Each Council member will be responsible for 10-11 states/areas.

3) The Council member working with the scholastic persons in each of the 10-11 states/areas will determine who will be the Liaison of that state.  This probably will be the name currently on the list which makes the job much easier. 

4)  The Chair of the Council will then submit the 52 names to the Executive Board for approval.  The Liaisons will then be responsible to select the next members of the Council who are up for election at the end of the year, thus giving you a new Council BEFORE the Delegates meeting and the US Open scholastic meetings.

5)  Once the names have been approved it will then be the job of the Council member to stay in touch and work with the Liaison person from each state.  This may necessitate some of the following:
a.  Periodically calling and emailing each state liaison to ask if the Council can be of assistance.
b.  Helping the state liaison cut through red tape and get things done with the office.
c.  Work with liaison ideas that have a national or local impact and importance.
d.  Work with liaison persons on Council goals.
e. Support the liaison of each state in their efforts to provide a Denker representative.

6)  Bring the ideas and information back to the Council members for review and comment.

States have been assigned to the following Council members:

Sunil Weeramantry:  NY, MD, DE, DC, MA, RI, VT, NJ, ME & NH

Beatriz Marinello:  KY, TN, IA, WI, IL, IN, MI, OH, WV, CT & VA

Robert Ferguson:  LA, MS, AL, GA, FL, MN, IA, MO, AR, SC, & PA

Ralph Bowman:  KS, TX, OK, NE, SD, ND, WY, NM, ID & CO
Dewain Barber:  HI, AK, OR, WA, N-CA, S-CA, MT, AZ, NV, & UT

Contact information for each of the Scholastic Council members is listed in the table below.  Hopefully this proposal will help us stay in contact with scholastic folks and improve or maintain communications.  There are still some details (Committee members-at-large, etc.) that will need to be fine-tuned, and the Council will discuss these in Atlanta.

** Story Hour with the Grandmasters ** GM Joel Benjamin and GM Arthur Bisguier along with their moderator, Stephen Shutt, entertain and inform their audience by sharing little-known chess anecdotes in this 90 minute video. CLICK HERE! _____________________________________________________

News Chessville     Recent Chess News  News & Notes, including Chessville     coverage of:  Curacao 1962 - 2002 Chess Tournament                          1st Saturday (Belgrade) Tourneys other online chess news resources The Week In Chess (TWIC) The most complete Tournament News Jeremy Silman - John Watson: Latest Chess News The Chess Oracle Monthly International Chess News The Chess Report Another great chess news site The Campbell Report Correspondence Chess News Net Chess News - News and More Web Site of the Month!   The Great Pawn Hunter Chess Tutorial  http://members.aol.com/manusfealy/index.htm This Web site was created and maintained by Manus Patrick Fealy (Manny). The goal of this tutorial is to share his love for the royal game with you. Its aim is not to focus on one concept but to introduce many concepts that you need to learn, to become a solid tournament level player. You are welcome to distribute the ideas presented here to everyone, as long as it is free. This site has a variety of educational tools� Chess stories Lessons for beginner, intermediate, and advanced players Check it out, and let us know what you think.  Share with us your favorite chess sites by e-mailing our Web Guy at [email protected]. _____________________________________________________

!!! Castle Chess Camp !!! Dates for the 2003 Castle Chess Camp are June 8-15 at Emory University in Atlanta and July 20-27 at the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford.  If you would like to be placed on our mailing list for the camps, email us at [email protected].

Knight's Tour

Eric Johnson has created a Website with some neat interactive quizzes. To try your hand at one, visit www.geocities.com/allentownchess/knightstour.html 

---

Coach Certification Update 

By Bob Ferguson

Several coaches are currently writing a Coach Manual to assist those dedicated coaches who want to hone their coaching skills.

In future issues of the Scholastic Chess Update, we will share glimpses of some of the articles that will be included in this resource.

If you want to take the Club Level test for certification, you must first email your full name and email address to [email protected].  The AmChess staff will then email your user ID and password. 

Important Notice: Our next Council meeting is scheduled for December 14th in Atlanta.  If you are planning to attend the K-12 Championships, please take advantage of the coaches' meetings and say hello to us.

---

Chess & Books with Fred Wilson

By Fred Wilson

I started hosting a new live Chess Internet radio talk show on http://www.chess.fm/ on Tuesday, October 29th. It runs for one hour, once a week, at 9:00 PM, and can be accessed for free!  It may be rebroadcast a couple of times during the week.  It is called "Chess and Books with Fred Wilson".

The show will usually consist of four segments: First, I will personally review one or more new and/or current chess books or products.  Then, we will always have an interview with an important chess personality--usually either a GM or IM, author, teacher, or chess business entrepreneur.  Then I have a short segment attempting to answer listeners' questions, which will be received either through email, or live over the telephone.  Finally, time permitting, I will attempt to address the different problems beginning or intermediate players encounter while attempting to improve their game.

I think this will become an exciting and worthwhile show, and hope you will tune in--no, I mean log in--to our program each Tuesday!

---

** Submit Articles For the Update **

We need your help to provide articles to chess folks.  Please consider submitting an article.  Share your ideas with others to help more kids reap the benefits of chess.

CLICK HERE!

---

One of the Scholastic Council�s goals is to improve communication among members of the scholastic community.  This e-Newsletter is the second step towards reaching this goal.  Our first step was the creation of a Scholastic Chess Website to communicate what the Scholastic Council is and what goals are being pursued.  For details, visit www.chess.isgenius.com or http://move.to/scholastic.chess.  

How do you contact your scholastic representatives?

FIRST	LAST NAME	EMAIL	PHONE
Dewain	Barber	[email protected]	714.998.5508
Ralph	Bowman	[email protected]	620.244.5683
Bob	Ferguson	[email protected]	814.368.4974
Beatriz	Marinello	[email protected]	914.375.9275
Sunil	Weeramantry	[email protected]	914.997.9409

The following are ex-officio members of the Council.

FIRST	LAST NAME	EMAIL	PHONE
Tom	Brownscombe	[email protected]	845.562.8350
Stephen	Shutt	[email protected]	215.978.6867

If you are NOT interested in scholastic chess, please click the reply button and type �remove� in the subject line.  If you know others who would like to receive this information, please forward the URL for the website to them.  If you are receiving multiple copies, please let us know so we can correct our error.  If you would like to see an improved newsletter, VOLUNTEER! 

The Scholastic Chess Update is a newsletter created to help coaches, parents, teachers, and others promote scholastic chess. It is read by over 1,500 chess aficionados.

The contents of this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the opinions of USCF Scholastic Council.  The Council makes no warranties about the contents of the Scholastic Chess Update.

To unsubscribe, just reply to this email with "remove" in the subject.

---

� Copyright 2002 American Chess School

---