Jim West On Chess: Brooklyn Master Wins $3.75 Million at Poker

Monday, November 10, 2008

Brooklyn Master Wins $3.75 Million at Poker

Brooklyn chess master Ylon Schwartz (USCF 2304) has finished in fourth place at the World Series of Poker, earning more than $3.75 million.

This calls to mind "The Professor" Howie Lederer, who used to play chess at the Bar Point in the 1980's.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov