Through chess, reaching out to at-risk youth

More than 1,000 elite chess players from around the country came to Philadelphia over the holiday weekend hoping to win the most prestigious American tournament of the year.

Orrin "Checkmate" Hudson came to Philadelphia from Atlanta hoping to save lives.

A former used-car salesman and state trooper, he didn't do badly in the World Open. In his best event, the 10-minute match, he won four games and lost one. Good enough for some prize money.

But that wasn't the point. Hudson, 46, was here to talk to anyone who would listen about his work motivating at-risk youth through chess and chess strategy.

"I was told there's a lot of need in Philadelphia," he said. "I want to do something."

In 2001, Hudson, a father of five, mortgaged his house, quit his job, and launched Be Someone - a nonprofit outreach program in which he teaches chess to young people to detour them from trouble.

He estimates he has reached about 20,000 students since then, although his ultimate goal is much loftier.

"I want to reach a million," he said. "What I'm doing, it works."

It did for Hudson.

Growing up in the housing projects of Birmingham, Ala., as one of 13 children, he recalled, he was rescued - from stealing, gang involvement, poor grades - by chess.

A high school teacher believed in him and taught him the game, stressing how the strategic thinking needed to succeed at chess would serve him well in life.

"Chess saved me," he said.

With his own savings, Hudson visits schools, gives speeches, and holds chess boot camps. He has written a book, One Move at a Time.

A Delaware screenwriter, Kate Danaher, read about Hudson and thought his life could make a screenplay. Danaher said a producer and actor were interested in the film, for which she's hoping to secure backing.

At the World Open last weekend at the Sheraton in Center City, Hudson favored quick matches over those running six hours. The latter would have pulled him away from networking and spreading the word about Be Someone. He preferred sitting at a table with his laptop and copies of the book, chatting up young people who passed by, and adults intrigued by his mission.

Who knows if a contact he made in Philadelphia, he said, would be the gateway to more children?

Hudson last played here in 1999, shortly before retiring from competitive chess. The next year, he had an epiphany when gunmen robbed a Wendy's restaurant in Queens of $2,400 and murdered five employees.

The shooters had to make a series of bad decisions to get to that low point, Hudson reasoned. How could he prevent others from getting there?

His voice rises in the excited, joyous cadence of a preacher when he hits on one of his catchphrases: "Heads up, pants up, grades up!" "Excellence is not enough. You have to be amazing!" "Be the champion you were born to be!"

The game offers many lessons, he said: To win, you need patience, focus, and the ability to see beyond the short-term.

"It takes teamwork to make the dream work," Hudson said. "The king surrounds himself with other pieces that make moves the king cannot."

Although his calendar is filled with foundation work, Hudson said, he thought it important to compete in the World Open, if only to show the students he mentors, mostly African American males, that he walks the walk, too.

"I wanted to match wits with some of the best chess players in the world," Hudson said. "It's good for the teacher to get in the game."

At the World Open - won by Russian Evgeny Najer and Hikaru Nakamura of New York - Hudson was out of practice, he admitted.

But he abided by his own rules. In one match, he was three seconds on the clock from checkmate. He worried if he could pull it off, but then plowed on, made his move, and won.

"The biggest mistake you can ever make in your entire life is to give up," he said. "You have to stay in the game."