The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team

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Penguin, 2007 - Education - 288 pages
An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nation's top high school chess team.

With strict admission standards and a progressive curriculum, Brooklyn's Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New York's public-education success stories, serving a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and minorities and ranking among the nation's best high schools. At Murrow, there are no sports teams, and the closest thing to jocks are found on the school's powerhouse chess team, which annually competes for the national championship.

In "The Kings of New York" sportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from cash games in Washington Square Park to city and state tournaments to the SuperNationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites. Along the way, Weinreb brings to life a number of colorful characters: the Yale-educated calculus teacher (and former semipro hockey player) who guides the savants while struggling to find funding for his team; an aspiring rapper and tournament hustler who plays with cutthroat instinct; the team's lone girl, a shy Ukrainian immigrant; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who plays an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the Lithuanian immigrant and team star whose chess rating is climbing toward grandmaster status.

In the bestselling tradition of such books as "Word Freak" and "Friday Night Lights, The Kings of New York" is a riveting look inside the world of competitive chess and an inspiring profile of young genius.

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Contents

PROLOGUE
1
OPENING
9
DO THE MATH
11
BRUCKNERS GAMBIT
21
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
29
AN ACADEMIC CHALLENGE
43
A GAME UNLIKE ANY OTHER
57
THE ORANGUTAN
75
TIRESOME DAYS AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS
159
THE 2005 NEW YORK STATE SCHOLASTIC CHAMPIONSHIP
169
ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE YOUR DESTINY
195
ENDGAME
211
SUPERNATIONALS III
213
SUMMERTIME
251
EPILOGUE
271
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
279

CHESS AND THE CITY
89
ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN
101
MIDDLE GAME
117
THE THIRTYNINTH ANNUAL GREATER NEW YORK SCHOLASTIC TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP
119
THE WOMEN IN THE ROOM
137
GLOSSARY
283
BIBLIOGRAPHY
287
WEB SITES
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