Dr. Alexey Root

I have completed the text for my fourth book, People, Places, Checkmates: Teaching Social Studies with Chess. That book will be published in late 2010. I am looking for a cover photo for this book. My idea is to show a chess board, one or two chess players (ages 8-15), and flags (either small flags near the board or large flags in the background). If you have such a photo in high quality (600 dpi), please email it to me, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

At the Chess Educator of the Year February 24, 2009 at The University of Texas at Dallas, honoree Dr. Stephen Lipschultz described the research grant: “Think Like a King is partnering with The University of Texas at Dallas to apply for US Department of Education funding to establish the first ever large-scale multi-year research effort to, hopefully, fully validate and define the precise role of chess in education.

Available for pre-order from online booksellers is Gary’s Adventures in Chess Country by Igor Sukhin, with an introduction by Susan Polgar (publication date June 2009). Chess Country has striking artwork, design, and overall production quality. The main characters are manga-style children; chess pieces and pawns have an elaborate medieval appearance.

Here is my talk summary posted 2/1/09 http://metroplexmathcircle.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/chess-and-math-recap/

And here is the initial press release:

Metroplex Math Circle Announces Dr. Alexey Root’s Lecture on Chess and Mathematics, Dallas, TX, January 31, 2009. Dr. Alexey Root will present on chess applications of graph theory to secondary math education. She will highlight the concepts of domination and independence and show how they can be illustrated through chess problems.

Previous award winners were Susan Polgar (2004), Sunil Weeramantry (2005), Erik Anderson (2006), David MacEnulty (2007), and Beatriz Marinello (2008). The 2009 award winner will be announced by press release soon, and will speak at The University of Texas at Dallas on February 24, 2009. Do you have a guess as to the winner?

At the opening reception for the Pan Am, FM Charles Galofre, second board for the Miami Dade chess team, introduced himself. He had read Science, Math, Checkmate, noticed the photo on page 5, and remarked, “That's a good photo of you and your bunny.” I was happy that someone had finally noticed Abba. It's not easy to sit at a computer and write for hours, but Abba keeping me company makes writing less lonely and more fun.

MonRoi Personal Chess Managers (PCMs) are in use at the 2008 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship. I am following the games on the MonRoi.com Web site, and also covering the event in person for Chess Life Online and Chess Life. The University of Texas at Dallas is the defending Pan Am Championship team.

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!

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.