Photo Credit: MAX ODEN
NM Bryan Tillis
I have often been asked by friends how I have devoted roughly the last ten years of my life studying a board game. Elements of chess competition and study can develop an individual in many ways in their life. I wasn’t learning chess in my teenage years I was learning life skills which have made me a successful individual today.
All throughout grade school I suffered from test anxiety. After special tutoring, hearing tests, and a myriad of other tries at fixing this problem I simply couldn’t put the pen to paper in a pressure situation. With a clock running and a teacher waiting patiently for my results I fell apart when I was being graded. The first great lesson I gained from chess was my ability to handle pressure and adversity much better. In time scrambles in a chess game where you have mere seconds left to finish the rest of the game a person’s nerves can go haywire. After years of competing with these high stress situations my ability to concentrate during tests improved and my grades with it. When I graduated from high school I was a B-C student, when I graduated from Troy Dothan with my bachelors I graduated magna cum lade.
Handling yourself better in pressure situations isn’t the only thing a young person can gain playing chess. I have developed life-long friendships with even my most dangerous adversaries. Week after week I had much older individuals taking time to help hone my game. I credit my success now to those relationships and also my maturity as a teenager. I was taught fair play and sportsmanship in the actions of most of my opponents and it has helped me in situations such as job interviews.
I have worked with the Boys & Girls club as a Unit Director in the past and taught over 125 children how to play chess. I have had students ranging in age from 4 to 86, there are benefits to the game regardless of age. The most powerful element of chess is communication; regardless of your socioeconomic background, race, religion, favorite football team…whatever…you can sit across from someone else and communicate with them through the game. I have played games with players who don’t even speak English and we had no difficulties having a post mortem on the game.
I won the 2011 Mississippi State Championship and also the 2011 Southern Amateur Championship titles. I am currently a National Master under the regulations of the United States Chess Federation and am in the top 5 active players in the state of Alabama with a rating of 2207.
I hope to work with you in the near future,
Bryan Tillis
Dothan, Alabama---- oo00oo----
NM Donny Gray
For the past 25+ years I have taught chess to kids and adults alike. Either I teach them online or in person at my office. However, there were a couple of years that some of my students could not come to my office nor had access to a computer. They were in prison.
The Augusta YDC (Youth Detention Center) houses hard core juvenile criminals. We are talking about the worse of the worst. About 10 years ago I read an article about prison chess and got the idea that maybe I could do the same at the YDC.
At the time it was not run by the state of Georgia but a company called Unique Solutions . They had won the contract to maintain the center. Employees were either guards, teachers, administration, and doctors of all kinds.
So I rounded up all kinds of information and studies about how chess teaches individuals to think. With chess you learn how to think instead of just memorization which is usually what happens at schools. Many studies show that kids taught chess will out perform others that just play video games. My manila envelope I mailed to the president of Unique Solutions was quite thick.
To my disbelief I got a call from the president to come discuss my proposal with him! He had talked it over with all of the doctors and everyone of them said that it would be a complete waste of time. These kids are uncontrollable, can not learn or fight the concept, not smart enough, etc. Well almost all. The president himself thought it was worth a try. So I was hired to do chess for about twenty hours a week, mostly on the weekend.
At first I had countless doctors & teachers come by my chess area and tell me I was wasting my time. They told of stories how their class rooms were absolute nightmares and that I would be soon realizing the truth. But the opposite happened.
Many of the boys thought they knew how to play chess. But after a few simuls they realized they knew very little. So I began lessons. Some one-on-one lessons and other group lessons. It was up to me to decide how to spend my chess time with them. We also had regular chess club meetings.
We had mini tournaments and matches. I began an in house rating system for them so they could have a goal in chess. Soon my chess classes were well attended. Soon they all began to know what I expected from them. There was no cussing, fighting, or misbehaving in Mr Gray’s chess room. Anytime a new boy would attend and began cussing or what ever, I would not have to say a word. The others would castigate the newbie immediately saying that if he did not stop it would ruin chess for all of them.
After about 6 months we held a contest with some of my students against the doctors and teachers. My "boys" won with ease! The doctors and teachers were astounded. Soon they started coming by my chess room and would be amazed at how orderly and how well behaved everyone was. The same ones that terrorized their classrooms were model citizens in mine.
Many of the boys told me on several occasions that chess had helped them overcome feelings of inadequacies and self-worth. All their lives they had been told they could not do anything other than a life of crime, yet here they were doing something others considered intellectual.
After about two years there was talk of making my chess instruction a full time position. However it was also about this time that the state decided to take over the center. Gone were the days of trying to help the kids in extra areas like chess. Just guarding them took precedence. So my chess teaching at the center was terminated.
Two things stand out about my two years there. One concerned a boy that was released and another was about a slow learning boy that was a resident there.
The boy that was released had an article in an Atlanta newspaper discussing how well he was doing now that he had been released. He stated in his interview how chess was the one of the main reasons that he was doing so well, as it gave himself respect and confidence to tackle hard things. Chess taught him not to give up.
The resident boy with a learning handicap had a difficult time in my chess meetings but attended regularly. After working with him for about 6 months he learned how to mate with a queen and king without help. His final test was against one of the doctors. You would have thought he had won the lotto he was so happy.
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