American Chess Initiative

Welcome to Chessinit – American Chess Initiative

On behalf of the American Chess Initiative I would like to welcome you to our website. Please give us any feedback on the quality or usage of the website at steve@chessinit.com. My name is Steve Robinson and I am the president of the American Chess Initiative. We teach young people, especially at-risk students, to play chess. Also as our program grows, we intend to do an in-depth study on the beneficial effects of chess on young people. In addition in the long term, we also plan to make chess a part of public education curricula throughout the United States.

Our story really begins in the 1960s with a chess master who quit playing in order to make teaching chess his main focus. I am not using his name in order to respect his privacy. He became a highly sought and respected teacher in California, with some students even attaining the rank of Master. Over the decades he developed a highly effective system (I’ll call it the “Morphy System”). In the 1990s, I met him and began studying his system. Under his tutelage and using the Morphy System, I was fortunate to attain the rank of Expert, one class below Master. When I moved to Lawrence, Kansas, he agreed to let me use the materials in the Morphy System in order for me to teach students in Lawrence public schools. In 2001 a team I coached was able to win a national co-championship in the elementary division of the National Scholastic Chess Championship held in Kansas City, Missouri. I also believe that during this period of years from 2000 to 2006, that Quail Run Elementary team was the most successful neighborhood public school in terms of national tournament success.

I relocated to the Washington, DC area in 2008. Late that year I decided that I wanted to get back to teaching chess after watching an HBO documentary on a Baltimore high school. By early March I returned to chess teaching, this time at MomiesTLC located in Washington, DC. This summer we expanded our services to two days a week and hope to expand the services further in the fall and as well as begin to teach a Montgomery County school with the All The Right Moves program.

I am very excited about the impact we are having on young lives and the progress we are making in developing our program. For example, just at the beginning of August we established our first Master Class in the tradition of the Morphy System in California. This will give us the foundation to achieve what we hope will be great things. For example, not only will we begin with at-risk students in academic chess tournaments this year, but we also plan to find an academic institution for partnership in producing a peer-reviewed study on the efficacy of the Morphy System in the intellectual and behavioral development of students. However, we cannot accomplish this mission without your support. We are asking everyone who is able to contribute at least $25 a year to this initiative. For more information please click the link below.  We believe it is not just money well-spent but money well invested for the future of children in America, especially those children who are at-risk. You can contribute on-line or by mail. Thank you in advance for your help in this exciting journey.

To make a $25 one month donation, click here: One month

To make a $120 six month donation, click here: Six months

To make a $240 one year donation, click here: One year

OR

Check out the  American Chess Initiative’s Fund Raising Drive through MOMIESTLC

You will then be asked to go to through MOMIES TLC’s Network for Good’s fund raising page which can be accessed by following these simple instructions:

1. Go to momiestlc.com
2. Click on the Network for Good’s “DONATE NOW” button
3. Write in your donation at the top of the page. Under designation please type in “American Chess Initiative”.
4. Complete the online donation process.