Susan Polgar moves

[Vlad Dobrich]

There is announcement in Susan PLolgar's blog that she is relocating her Institute for Chess Excellence from Texas Tech to St Louis where a benefactor with deep pockets has spent several million $ to create the top chess centre in America. Here is an excerpt from her blog:
>>>>>
St. Louis is home to the U.S. Chess Championships, the country's No. 1 rated player and the World Chess Hall of Fame.

Soon you can add the nation's No. 1 collegiate chess team to that list.

On Friday, Webster University announced that Hungarian-born Susan Polgar — winner of four world championships — is moving her Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence from Texas Tech University to Webster.

Polgar is bringing her 2011 collegiate championship team with her.

And that's not the only recent chess addition.

Lindenwood University leaders say they will begin offering chess scholarships this fall to build a collegiate chess team.

Almost overnight, St. Louis has gone from having a few players meeting in coffee shops and bookstores to being among the premier chess cities in the country.

That's thanks in large part to retired businessman and philanthropist Rex Sinquefield who built the multimillion-dollar Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis in the heart of the Central West End a few years ago. Some chess experts have called Sinquefield the most significant benefactor of chess in America, and they credit him with putting St. Louis on the map.

The club prompted Hikaru Nakamura — the top-rated player in the country and No. 6 in the world — to move to St. Louis.

Is there someone in Canada with deep pockets who would sponsor something similar? This is where our chess journalists could take an active part.
Lawrence Day, Jonathan Berry, et al why not feature a chess column on this development? You may inspire someone to step forward.

[Caesar Posylek]

Re: Susan Polgar moves

Is there someone in Canada with deep pockets who would sponsor something similar? This is where our chess journalists could take an active part.
Lawrence Day, Jonathan Berry, et al why not feature a chess column on this development? You may inspire someone to step forward.[/QUOTE]


Is something like that to happen in .......... Canada!!????

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Susan Polgar moves

Is there someone in Canada with deep pockets who would sponsor something similar? This is where our chess journalists could take an active part. Lawrence Day, Jonathan Berry, et al why not feature a chess column on this development? You may inspire someone to step forward.

The et al is getting thin on the ground. CFC used to have a letter for chess journalists, among whom say around 15 wrote regular columns for newspapers. How many remain?

Yes I'll write about the new location of the Polgar Institute, for its own sake, no need to justify the means. This is ChessTalk, where Ken's become kin, and Ho's almost win torneos. As it happens, I had just read Susan Polgar's article, and was looking for an appropriate place to enter a permalink to it.

When I was of that age, the top young players tended to choose their institutes of higher learning conservatively. In BC that meant UBC, not the upstart SFU. Elsewhere that meant U of Tea, McGill etc. I'm not intending to impugn the other fine institutions. Well, at the 1999 Closed, I was eavesdropping a conversation among several of the young folk, and they were mentioning places like Yale and Harvard.

I know some highly-publicized ones, like (then future-GM) Pascal Charbonneau attending UMBC (Maryland), and of course we have line-ups from the Canadian Intercollegiate, but otherwise I don't know much about where top young players these days are going to Uni...

[Vlad Dobrich]

Re: Susan Polgar moves

Hi Jonathan,
I was not thinking that some Canadian advanced learning institute would include chess in their curriculum. I was thinking more along the line that someone with lots of bucks would create a chess center similar to the one in St Louis.
Do we dare to dream?:)