weblogs.baltimoresun.comThe top 24 chess players in the country begin competing this hour in the 2009 U.S. Championship. Also known as "The Super Bowl of Chess" (it's the same as the gridiron version, but without the cheerleaders, testosterone, or multimillion dollar commercial breaks) the competition will be held at The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis in the Central West End.Favorites to take home the $200,000 top prize include the defending champion, grandmaster Yury Shulman
badattitudes.comRex and Jeanne Sinquefield, co-founders of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, purchased a large collection of writings by the reclusive and controversial chess master Bobby Fischer for $61,000 at a San Francisco auction earlier this week.The prize of the collection are the notebooks Fischer kept leading up to his 1972 World Championship Match with the Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky. Also included in the haul are "320 books on chess; about 400 issues of chess-r
