Joe Lux wasn’t born to play chess; it just seems like he was.
He wandered into New York City’s Washington Square Park when he was still in high school and saw people seated at tables there, playing.
“I just watched what they did,” he said.
Born in Manhattan, Lux moved to Jersey City when still in elementary school. When he heard that the Jersey City YMCA offered a chess club, and he joined.
“I was very lucky; it was one of the strongest clubs in the state,” he said.
They had some top players from around Hudson County, and some even went to the U.S. Championships.
“So I got a good grounding in the game,” he said.
He also played in a club at college for a time.
In January, Lux will start as managing director of the U.S. Chess Trust, a national organization that helps professional chess players and promotes chess among young people.
“He has had a major impact on chess in Bayonne as tournament director of elementary and city recreation programs,” said Michael Lynch, a popular local sports coach. “He teaches chess in Manhattan and serves as an elementary coach in the Bayonne school program.”
A former president of the New York State Chess Association, he is now a member of the Board of Directors of the New Jersey State Chess Federation. For many years, Luz has been a member of the USCF Tournament Director Certification Committee, and has frequently served as a member of the USCF Board of Delegates. He has been teaching and coaching chess to children in New York City and New Jersey for the past 23 years.
His new post will expand his chess resume. The trust was created in 1967 to promote, stimulate, and encourage the study and play of the game of chess as a means of intellectual development, promoting and supporting chess in the community through its programs, and by providing resources that help support its mission.
Lux said he’ll be overseeing programs and collecting donations.
“I don’t have to be a chess master to do the job,” he said. “I’m basically doing a lot of bookkeeping and working with social media. The person I’m replacing did the job for more than 30 years and isn’t a chess player.”
Grew up in New York and in Jersey City
A native of the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Lux moved to Jersey City, where he attended Public School No. 23 on Duncan Avenue and later graduated from Dickinson High School in 1971. He started playing in organized chess events in 1969.
Growing up during the Vietnam War when some who attended college managed to avoid being drafted, he earned high enough grades to receive a scholarship to New York University.
He liked science and majored in chemistry but couldn’t keep it up and so moved on. For a time he worked as a waiter in a German restaurant in New York City.
“I enjoyed working with the public,” he said.
During this period he became a National Chess Master.
“I’m probably the weakest master there is, but I’m still a master, and I’m happy about that. Nobody can take it away from me.”
Eventually, he went on to Fordham University where he majored in economics.
He took courses from a psychology professor who was also a senior master in chess.
Lux said he wanted to apply psychology to cognitive ability in chess and eventually did a paper for his course using one of the tournaments. He got a B-plus on the paper, which riled him at the time. He thought he had come up with insights.
“The professor told me it wasn’t useful,” he said.
Years later, a grand chess master looking at his work said it was useful and began to apply his insights.
“He said it was important to know how to think ahead,” Lux said.
A couple of years later, his findings were published in one of the most important chess magazines in the world.
At some point, a friend asked him if he wanted to teach chess at a school in Manhattan, where he still teaches. He has since expanded his teaching to two schools in Bayonne, and the city recreation program on Saturdays. Teaching has been his main source of income over the last 23 years.
Learning from young Turks of chess
One of his first jobs in chess was as National Tournament Director with the USCF for a professional chess master. He directed tour operations for the master up and down the east coast from Massachusetts to Florida.
“Oddly enough, his tour manager for the Midwest was George R.R. Martin [author of “Game of Thrones,” among other works] who was from Bayonne,” he said.
This was at the peak of chess’s public popularity when Bobby Fischer was world champion.
“Chess was super popular at the time,” Lux said.
He said this brought him into contact with many of the Young Turks of the competitive chess world, and he learned a lot from them by pure osmosis.
“I watched their games all the time,” he said. “Some of them went on to become grand masters. One or two made a living at it.”
Teaching chess
Chess has a remarkable way of helping kids concentrate and can become a tool for therapy in treating children with attention deficit disorders and other special needs, he said.
“Many times kids with learning disabilities become aggressive because they are frustrated,” Lux said. “Chess allows them to express their anger in a confined setting with rules.”
He recalled one kid who was able to get on the A team for a shot at the state championship.
Normally, elementary schools battle for the local championship, and some players head to the state championship.
“I believe chess increased his self confidence.” – Joe Lux
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“The kid didn’t do well in the state championships, but he sat and watched the whole tournament, and later he came up to me and said, ‘Now I know how chess is played.’”
Over the next few years, Lux ran into the boy from time to time and eventually discovered that the kid had managed to get a job on Chelsea Piers in Manhattan working at a gym.
“Many kids with his disabilities don’t get that far,” Lux said. “I believe chess increased his self confidence. Chess does help improve cognitive skills.”
Lux said he likes chess because it offers an even playing field. Everybody has the same pieces and the same board. But in education, Lux sees it as a tool for helping kids to develop their cognitive skills.
“You don’t get much of an opportunity to use those skills in education today,” he said. “You get it in art, music, and chess. Everything else seems to be teaching to a test. With chess, kids get to apply what they learned. Chess is about critical thinking, and is very useful for younger aged children. Not every kid I teach will become a grand master, but they will get an opportunity to learn how to think. They learn how to take responsibility for their actions.”
He teaches kids from kindergarten to fifth grade in Manhattan, and up to eighth grade in Bayonne. He said younger girls in the lower grades tend to do as well as boys, but tend to drift off when they get older.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.