From your reference to the NY Times articles I see the issue of prodigies
enters your mind??? (U know what that means right?). Are the chess
prodigies viewed (even by the chess community as a whole) as
any thing more than rarified freaks?
----------------------------------------------------------------

Was it more than an accident that the USA had developed a child prodigy like
Bobby Fischer?
I say no for where as intelectual interests (such as mathamatics, the
sciences etc)
can be correlated to interest in chess and analysis, the U.S. is more
business oriented
( and imports what else it needs )has few if any of the world's top 100
chess problemists
in what has worsened with the passing of GM Milan Vulcevich (chess
problemist)
a great loss for US chess as well as Yugoslav and World chess (though we may
have had our disagreements, [he supported the Yugoslav a monarchy last time
I heard and I would never]) .

The efforts of the Soviet chess school lives on even today in the likes of
Kasparov, Kramnik, and every eastern bloc ex-soviet émigré as it was no
accident
the Soviets developed Spunik first (as the Soviets developed the Soviet
Chess school
when as the old Regime [the likes of Alekhine deserted it] that's life).

Though Bobby Fischer won the championship (for his 15 minutes of fame) his
days were numbered as his reputation lives on in the past not the present as
he has long abandoned any social involvement with chess or much of any thing
else (though how many want a raving anti-Semitic lunatic like him for
company). In any case B. Fischer's achievements were a credit to his
individual abilities and efforts (and his mom's who whom he seemingly
disowns as
she was purportedly a Jewish leftist) not the American system's or the
USCF's as they gave him nothing and in fact often hindered his efforts (of
which he bitterly complained and complains of even today).

If today's participants of scholastic chess are to progress into something
more in adulthood they will need the time of support that the U.S. is sorely
lacking as there is no cohesiveness to the spectrum that stretches from the
middle class (in the isolation of its pompous well financed isolation of
private schools and abilities to spend $10,000 a year on chess [and chess
lessons] for individual children (, and well stocked shelves) to the poor
who are corrupted and hindered as they struggle thru their day to day
existences of affairs that often limit parental time with children to 45
minutes a day. (see footnote 1 and 2)

Where the budget of the poor can not match those of the rich it is no
surprise the quality of chess in the USA does not equal even Armenia,
Israel or Greece as it is individually rich but collectively poor and where
the likes of Morphy, Marshal, and Fischer only occur once every second or
third blue moon (as most of the US's International chess competitors are
from other countries) so that the idiot flag wavers have an excuse to be
proud when actually we should try harder but we won't as the same thing that
allows our success also produces our defeats as even money does not breed
sucess.

(footnote 1.) "buy him more than 30 chess primers, and pay $50 an hour for
weekly chess lessons." $2600 per year, (5th ranked 8 year old) (NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/travel/escapes/19CHES.html )

(footnote 2. )"she spends about $10,000 a year on chess for her son, a sum
that the family struggles to afford" (Heung Mom number 1st ranked 8 year
old". (Ibid)

---- Original Message -----
From: "madawaska02" <mgagne@...>
To: <wcnchess@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 1:05 PM
Subject: [wcnchess] Child's Play: Grade-School Grandmasters Square Off


> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/travel/escapes/19CHES.html


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]