Game of Kings: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs and Geniuses who Make up America’s Top High School Chess Team

251 Pages·2007·2.04 MB·English

by  Michael Weinreb

Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication

PART ONE - OPENING
ONE - DO THE MATH
TWO - BRUCKNER’S GAMBIT
THREE - FREEDOM OF CHOICE
FOUR - AN ACADEMIC CHALLENGE
FIVE - A GAME UNLIKE ANY OTHER
SIX - THE ORANGUTAN
SEVEN - CHESS AND THE CITY
EIGHT - ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN

PART TWO - MIDDLE GAME
NINE - THE THIRTY-NINTH ANNUAL GREATER NEW YORK
SCHOLASTIC TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL ...
TEN - THE WOMEN IN THE ROOM
ELEVEN - TIRESOME DAYS AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS
TWELVE - THE 2005 NEW YORK STATE SCHOLASTIC
CHAMPIONSHIPS
THIRTEEN - IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE YOUR DESTINY

PART THREE - ENDGAME
FOURTEEN - SUPERNATIONALS III
FIFTEEN - SUMMERTIME

EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
Acknowledgements
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEB SITES
Praise for Game of Kings: “Lively, inspiring. . . .With
[Michael Weinreb’s] vivid portraits and brisk narrative
style, he manages to find high drama in a roomful of
brilliant young minds pushing little pieces across a 64-
square grid.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“[Game of Kings] is supported by well-chosen detail, intelligence, and terrific
writing. Weinreb clearly develops an affection for the eclectic members of his
team, and because of the skill he brings to his project, so will his readers.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Compelling. . . .Weinreb paces the action expertly. . . .The season’s ebbs and
flows intermingle with the prosaic details of inner-city adolescence to singularly
lyrical effect.” —Kirkus
“Entertaining.” —Newsday

“Not only among the very best accounts written about chess, but also among the
best nonfiction works 2007 has offered.”
—OK Gazette

“Writing with the deft, propulsive style of a young Frank Deford, Michael
Weinreb has captured both the intellectual insanity—and the curious normalcy—
of what it’s like to be a teenaged super-genius. Game of Kings is the Friday
Night Lights of high school chess.”—Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs,
and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV

“Game of Kings is about chess in the same way that Darcy Frey’s The Last Shot
was about basketball. Michael Weinreb’s real subjects are the nature of talent,
the onset of adolescence, and the kingdom of Brooklyn. This is a wonderful
book.”
—Mark Kriegel, author of Pistol:The Life of Pete Maravich and Namath: A
Biography “Michael Weinreb has done a heroic job doing something once
thought impossible—making an eminently readable topic out of chess. Part Word
Freak, part Season on the Brink, Game of Kings is a gripping inside look at an
endearingly quirky subculture.”
—L. Jon Wertheim, author of Transition Game and Venus Envy
“Game of Kings isn’t so much a book about high school chess as it is an
unforgettable journey into the blessing and curse of adolescent genius. With a
narrative rich in voice—a gathering of intoxicating characters—Weinreb has
delivered nothing short of a generational classic. This is a stunning book. You
won’t soon forget it.”
—Adrian Wojnarowski, author of The Miracle of St. Anthony
Michael Weinreb’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston
Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and ESPN The Magazine. In his career
as a journalist, he has been named best sportswriter in Ohio by the Associated
Press, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and has been cited three times in the
Best American Sports Writing anthology. He lives in New York City.

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London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © 2007 by Michael Weinreb
eISBN : 978-1-592-40338-7
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In memory of my uncle,
Mark Rosenbloom (1945-2005),
the first chess player I knew
The Murrow team with President Bush (from left to right): Congressman
Anthony Weiner, Senator Charles Schumer, Alex Lenderman, Sal Bercys, Ilya
Kotlyanskiy, President George W. Bush,Willy Edgard, Nile Smith, Oscar
Santana, Olga Novikova, Dmitriy Minevich, and Eliot Weiss with his two
children