Hello everybody.

I’m Guido Domenico De Santis and I’m very happy to stay here and share with all of you my project, the project chess challenges.

I left my small town in Southern Italy, during the COVID 19 pandemic, with the desire to play chess online with some of my friends in order to be together and not to feel too alone. So, in my small town, I slowly started organizing small online tournaments. Gradually, however, I found myself always having new guys who asked me to learn how to play chess, so in my free time, I gave some lessons on zoom or WhatsApp to those who were approaching the game for the first time..

Something nice and fun has gradually transformed, it has grown: there were more and more people who wanted to learn, so with some of my friends, we did small workgroups to teach how to play chess. In short, I found myself thanks to a passion of mine, a hobby, meeting new people, in places other than mine: we had practically created a community united by the passion for the game of chess.

I realized that anyone who approached this game was intrigued, fascinated: it has no cost, it is accessible to everyone, but it builds great potential in the mind and soul. So, why not teach this game to those who are most disadvantaged, have no means, giving them the opportunity to be able to maximize their potential.

Then  the mission of Project Chess is :

CHESS has the meaning as an acronym of:

Challenge: We challenge our students to reach their highest potential.

Honor: We honor the diversity and uniqueness of every student.

Equality : Our goal is global educational equality

Skills : We teach skills that empower our students.

Success : We launch our students on a path to success.

We believe that playing chess, forcing oneself to think so extraordinary social goals can be achieved.

In fact, thanks to this game that requires study, calm, the ability to see and imagine the opponent’s moves, everybody is able to face the difficulties of life, to develop his own possible strategy to maximize his potential, without barriers.

We help you see things differently, from another angle, giving everyone the opportunity to understand their limits but trying to encourage them to bring out the best from themselves.

We honor diversity, each person has their own uniqueness, we try to ensure equality in education and teach respect for the rules.

Respect for the opponent and for the rules contributes to a less violent, fairer and more socially integrated society. Training the mind to reflect, limiting impulsiveness, favors the rational development of his own conscience and goals for future for each one and prepares him for sacrifice, for the work of every day thanks to which great things are built. In fact, the game always presents new challenges: each opponent is different, so we learn to balance personal and external resources, evaluate the risks and advantages of each move in a short time and have a strategic vision of different options. Chess hones the skills of interpreting reality towards a clarity that maximizes the results of each player. The chess player is not super intelligent: he only has a way of thinking between strategy and tactics that enhance his intellectual qualities. Studying the opponent, analyzing him, is a work of great reflection and thus allows you to apply this concept to everyday life: everyone, even those who find themselves in difficult conditions, by reflecting can elaborate their strategy to maximize their abilities.

In this way we can reach global education equality and launch youth on a path to success. Playing chess in our community permits to create opportunities of education without every kind of barrier and prejudice.

Education can be achievable also for disadvantaged youth because we can build a culture of equality and assume that everyone must have the possibility to maximize his highest potential. We want join people from all the continents to demonstrate that the world can be a better place: it depends on us!

In chess there is no luck: one can only attribute to oneself, to one’s game plan, the responsibility for a victory or a defeat: A game of chess is, when the chessboard is stopped, a succession of moves and changes of positions that force players to modify, change the game plans without losing sight of the goals to be achieved. A game of chess is not about moving pieces without a plan, one is bound to succumb. Seeing long, seeing far, changing the plan of one’s life according to the opponent’s changes is the greatest lesson we can draw for a boy in life: the roads are winding, difficult, different between people, involving intelligent sacrifices, but what matters is never to lose sight of the goal and to set a strategy and change it in the course of work in order to adapt it to the new different situation. There is everything in this ability: leadership, project management, problem-solving, decision making, solution focus, and also respect for constraints, for competitors who are analyzed, studied, and contrasted. The game of chess develops the role of the innovator in each of us: those who learn from mistakes by playing and replaying continuously, training to recognize them in order to make as little of them as possible. Chess is a way to maximize creativity and forced to decide, decide, decide always have a changing plan according to the opponent’s plan: there are no tricks, shortcuts but only visions, strategies and the ability to think and innovate from the present to the past to the future. Chess, as a beautiful art of war, also requires improvisation, adaptation to new situations: if you are not ready to accept the change, understand it, model it and innovate it, you have lost!!

It is the geography of the battlefields that shape our destinies. Chess players always seek out new openings, new approaches, and new ideas on an old game: either we are more daring, more prepared than the others or they will stay ahead of us: knowledge is better than ignorance. Knowing that something is happening is better than not knowing. F. Bacon said that knowledge is power if we act on it. Sun Tzu in the book The art of war says: “ you can know how to win, without necessarily winning”, however, without knowing how you can be sure not to win. Knowledge in chess is a means to win: if you have not studied, understood, though, you cannot even imagine beating your opponent, not even in life.

It is the use of the brain, of the mind that allows every man to evolve, to shape his evolution, and to know how to adapt to the changing conditions of his life: CHESS GIVES US ALL OF THIS!

The last but not least thing that passionated me it was discovering LEONARDO’s contribution to chess rules.

Leonardo Da Vinci is the greatest genius humanity has ever had.

It was extraordinary for me to discover his contribution to the modern chess game.

During 2006, in Gorizia, Italy, in the library of Count Coronini, an original manuscript was found, considered preparatory to the De Ludo Schachorum by Luca Pacioli, mathematician and great friend of Leonardo.

He describes new moves, new rules, and a new proportion of elements, never seen before. The solution to Leonardo’s rebus about “castling chess” (Io arroccherò) reveals Leonardo’s contribution to this game.

The analyzes of the manuscript found have shown that Leonardo not only drew the newly conceived pieces but also created many of the “diagrams” with the various positions (this can be seen from the fact that they are drawn with the left hand and that the chessboards are made without using the ruler).
The analysis of both forms, proportions of the manuscript and of the drawings shown, reveal an artist’s hand in drawing the pieces, in shapes and proportions different from the traditional game of chess that prevailed until then (we are at the end of the fifteenth century and years of the sixteenth century). There are pages and diagrams attributable to Leonardo by all scholars in the manuscript.
Passion for mathematics and element proportion create a superlative game we have today. Leonardo is my inspirer which I want to share with others.

I hope I have not bored you, but I wanted to explain to anyone who wants to hear what Project Chess animates, my belief in giving the education to think instead of inciting young people to violence makes me believe that a better world can be built than this.

I thank all the guys who shared this project with me, my friends in other continents, my friends in Italy, the guys who are interested in learning this game, my family, the sponsors, and all those who want to take an interest in this game.

See you next time