Chessville - by chessplayers, for chessplayers!


Be Your Best - Play Chess

Zebedee (Zeb) Fortman Jr.
USCF Expert, Scholastic Chess Coach, Chess Promoter

I will not only share my USCF tournament experiences but also lessons from my continuing work with students.  This column will follow my return to one of the loves of my life, the game of chess.

Hopefully my path to chess improvement, at the age of 61 years old, will give many others encouragement that, even with a late start, they can always get better.  In sharing what works and doesn’t work, we can improve together and you may even benefit from my success as well as my challenges.  If I can still improve I know you can too!

I started playing USCF rated chess in 1971 at the age of 22.  Now, at the age of 61, I am starting to play USCF tournament chess again.

While active, I maintained a USCF Expert rating for over a decade while playing on a regular basis, reaching a high of 2122 USCF in 1988.  I have won the Missouri State Class A (‘84) and Missouri State Expert (‘95) titles.

In addition to actively playing chess, I organized many chess clubs in Kansas City, including the Inner City Chess Club and the Rockhurst Community Chess Club.  I was President of the Kansas City Chess Club in the 70’s and Executive Director of the Regional Chess Council, which brought the 2001 Super National Scholastic Championships to Kansas City.  In addition, I was honored by the Kansas City Star as one of the top 25 Sports Personalities in Kansas City.

I created and developed “Be Your Best Play Chess,” a chess-in-the-school program which was used in Kansas City, Missouri schools.  I have been a scholastic coach for over 20 years.  As a scholastic coach, I coached the K-5 Missouri Scholastic Championship winning team five years in row with three different teams.  Many of my students have won state and national championships.  I have also run several chess camps in the Kansas City Area for the last seven years.

This column will follow my return to tournament chess, improving my play and tips that I learned while coaching others.  Enjoy, and let me know what you think, and about your experiences too!

Click on the links below to read each of Zeb's individual columns:

 

 

Chessville
logo by
ChessPrints

 

Follow Chessville1 on Twitter
 


Ranked #1 by Google
"largest chess database''




The
Chessville
Chess Store


The
Chessville
Weekly

Newsletter

Subscribe
Today -

It's Free!!

The
Chessville
Weekly
Archives

 

Advertise
with
Chessville!!

Advertise to
thousands
of chess
fans for
as little
as
$25.

Single insert:
$35
x4 insert:
@ $25 each


 

 

This site is best viewed with Java-Enabled MS Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 6 browsers set at 800x600 screen size.

Copyright 2002-2009 Chessville.com unless otherwise noted.