"The Incredible Tyler Hughes"

This game, unfortunately, is a loss for Tyler. But it appeared yesterday in the New York Times as a click and move. I got the notification from Brian Wall's chess blog. Tyler lost to Ray Robson, whom they said in the article had better endgame technique.

I've known Tyler since he was a nine yr old kid at the Denver Chess Club. He was the number one student of Brian Wall, whose chess antics both over and off the board were legendary.

It's funny, Brian had been a friend of mine before I left for Los Angeles when my son Isaac was about 2 months old. He was a door to door salesman and used to stop over with SM John Hall at my house and rest on my lazy boy chair. At that time I didn't even realize that he was a master. For some reason I thought he was a patzer like me. We would play blitz games at my kitchen table with my 1 month old swinging in one of those wind up chairs. I moved to Los Angeles and lost touch with him. Then about 5 yrs later began recieving these bizarre chess emails from him and thought he'd lost it. But no, it turned out he'd found it! He decided to start these chess emails which eventually led us to write "How To Play Chess Like An Animal."

When I moved back to Denver in around 2002, and played in my first local tournament I got "fishing Poled." My opponent gave me a free knight and then my position was hopeless. After the game I had to ask "What was that??" "Oh," he replied with a big grin on his face, "That's Brian Wall's emails!"

Tyler Hughes cut his chess teeth on these silly antics. These "chess jokes" like the fishing pole, which he played early and often at that time. He has since outgrown such ridiculous chessness but deep down, Tyler is also a chess prankster like Brian Wall, his first chess teacher. Now we all cheer from the Denver area as we watch "The Incredible Tyler Hughes" go national.