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tradition has to be maintained. anthony corrales is doing just that for the game of chess. at
age 35, he is the scholastic director for the oldest chess club in the country, the
mechanics’ institute library and chess room. on the fourth floor at 57 post street the chess
club spreads its chessboard inlaid tables over a blue expanse of rug that has been the
place for many a mortal battle.
from this vantage point the chess master teaches children and adults the finer points of
the most popular board game in the western world.
at 6 feet 4 inches corrales is an imposing figure. with his long hair and steven seagal
build, he could have been a martial arts teacher. he is physically able to withstand the
tension created in tournament chess that often has opponents battling for hours and using
as much energy in matches equal to the expenditure of energy of some players in a
professional football game.
but his intellectual background lent him more readily to chess. raised in orange county in
a house full of books, corrales was the son of an engineer father and a psychologist
mother.
“i just happened to be in a neighborhood where there was a lot of chess being played. in
my neighborhood there were three masters who lived within four blocks of me and
another five or six boys who later became masters,” corrales said.
corrales deals with this by staying physically active with baseball. his strategy is not
unlike other chess greats, who use sports to keep themselves fit for rigorous matches. the
reclusive bobby fischer played tennis and swam as part of his climb to the world
championship in 1972, while kasparov played competitive soccer and danced.
“i am not as strong a player as i was 10 years ago, but i do know more about chess than i
did 10 years ago,” corrales said.
the reason for this is that chess and its physical demands favors youth. fischer was 29
when he won his championship. he never defended it.
corrales became a master at age 20.
corrales, who has taught at the mechanics’ institute for seven years, said that teaching and
training is his forte. he teaches mostly junior players who play chess in the state and
national level for team tournaments. he also teaches free chess to kids ages 5 to 16 twice
a week and has seen some of them go on to his teams.
a former mission resident of six years before moving to richmond, corrales said that this
game of pure skill helps teach problem-solving skills, patience, planning and self-
reliance, among other things.
“in chess you learn to interpret something and make it work. it is one of those games that
basically comes back to you,” he said.
he said that when he was a kid only about 8 percent of the players in the chess federation
for the united states were children. now the number is about half, thanks partially to
support offered by corporations so that clubs can provide free classes to youth.
because children are naturally rambunctious, chess teaches patience and discipline. it
teaches a line of attack.
on a recent free thursday night class, one young boy was overhead saying, “chess is cool.
i hope to be a master some day. i’m starting to win more now.”
unlike the squares of a chessboard, the game is not separated into black and white.
“it is one field of endeavor where a stockbroker or an accountant will play someone who
is a working class person … chess helps break down prejudices,” corrales said.
for many, with its beauty and dimensions, chess is a metaphor for life.
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