The Daily Dirt hasn't been daily lately but with good reason. I'm on the road and in the United States all chess roads run through Seattle, Washington. That's because Seattle is the home of the AF4C, better known as America's Foundation for Chess. They run the US Championship as well as promote a major scholastic initiative.
I spent an hour interviewing multi-millionaire venture capitalist Erik Anderson, President and co-founder of the AF4C. He talked about future plans for American chess and his own chess interests. The video interview will run on an upcoming ChessBase CD-ROM Magazine. Excerpts will likely soon appear in Chess Magazine (UK) and possibly Chess Life (US) (although not unless Chess Life first pays me for the photos they published six months ago!).
This is a bit of a coming out party for the affable Mr. Anderson, who has been content to stay behind the scenes and dish out piles of money, mostly raised for the AF4C as well as quite a bit from his own pocket. (At the closing ceremony of the 2003 Championship he personally wrote Akobian and Shabalov checks for $5,000 each for having fought hard in the final round instead of joining the other four top boards in agreeing to non-game GM draws.)
At his gorgeous corner office practically atop Lake Washington he shared his thoughts on the success of the AF4C, and his opinions of the USCF, FIDE, and the World Championship. And what could this have to do with the New York Yankees? You'll have to find out in this don't-miss interview.
