Chess has followed me through every season of life: from beachside chessboards in Hawaii to Brooklyn courtrooms to running our summer camps in Park Slope! What began as a childhood hobby became the thread connecting my career, my relationships, and the work I love most today.
Hi, I’m Kim. I run Chess at Three’s Park Slope Club and my boss wanted me to write a blog post about chess and summer camp. I agreed for selfish reasons: I need help finding my old chess coach and I figured this is a platform for it.
So if you know a Michael Amore who taught chess in Hawaii during the summer of 2000, can you send him my way? I have a lot to thank him for. Chess has carried me through every dark corner and whimsical pivot in my life. And it all started that summer.
I was seven and chess was the highlight of my summer. I remember Mr. Amore teaching at the front of the room, moving the pieces around a vinyl display board, playing out scenarios and telling stories like “The Queen Who Never Came Home” (a warning about playing your queen too aggressively too early; this was before Story Time Chess but Mr. Amore knew how to use a story to make a chess concept stick).
I fell in love with chess immediately. I wanted to play my mom, my dad, anyone really. After surfing with my dad, I’d make him stop and watch the chess tables set up by the beach. I even played a game with one of the regulars once (and lost rapidly but still had a great time).
In middle school, I joined the chess team that Mr. Amore coached. My dad would drive me across the island so I could spend entire Saturdays at chess tournaments. I loved getting to play so many different opponents: each game was a fresh puzzle and my brain loved - still loves - the thrill of figuring it all out.
My high school didn’t have a chess team, but even though I stopped playing in tournaments, chess continued to support me academically, personally, and professionally.
Academically, chess helped me develop a positive and enthusiastic relationship with deductive reasoning and logic puzzles, which in turn made me a great test taker. I actually enjoyed taking the SAT, LSAT, and New York Bar Exam, all because of the game I learned as a child that taught me to love methodically unwinding problems in my head.
In my relationships, chess not only provided an easy connection point to making new friends, but it also became a little litmus test in my dating life. Most of the men I dated knew how to play chess and were happy to play chess with me…until they realized that I was a tougher opponent than they expected. When I played for the first time against my now-husband, he won graciously and immediately began chatting through a section of the game and how it could have played out differently. Like me, his love of chess is about more than winning or losing - it’s about the process of figuring things out. [Here’s a video clip of my husband and his best friend Kyle playing chess at the afterparty of Kyle’s wedding while being serenaded by alumni of rival Yale acapella groups. True Story.]
Chess has taken me to strange and beautiful places.
Chess also led me down a career path that I never expected, one that’s made me happier than any ten year plan I drew up at sixteen.
I knew I wanted to be a public interest lawyer since I was in high school. In college, I did a summer internship in DC and came out convinced that I wanted to dedicate my whole life to being a public defender. I went to law school and achieved my dream. I was a public defender in Brooklyn for three and a half years, including during lockdown in 2020. I specialized in adolescent representation and was passionate about my work. However, the job was also incredibly challenging. In 2023, I realized that no matter how much I cared, the path I was on had become unsustainable.
So I quit without a backup plan, the biggest risk I’d ever taken. And there waiting for me was chess. Specifically, an ad looking for storytellers to teach chess to young children.
The year I spent as a Story Time Chess tutor was one of the best years of my life. After years of working with children during terrible times in their lives, it was healing to have a job that focused on bringing kids joyful and silly experiences. I never planned on being a chess tutor, but it made me incredibly happy, happier than I thought I could be. And as I ran uptown and downtown and all around the city for chess classes, I couldn’t stop thinking about my old chess teacher and how incredibly grateful I was for what he taught me and where chess had taken me.
I started looking for Mr. Amore: he wasn’t on social media sites and the google results were confusing at best. I messaged his son on Instagram and didn’t get a reply.
Then, around this time last year, Harlan and Nicholas asked me if I wanted to run the Park Slope Club. I’m told that my jaw literally dropped. I, of course, said yes.
I started managing the club last year at the beginning of summer camp season. I was excited but nervous: I’d trained to be a trial lawyer, I’d learned to be a fun tutor, and here was yet another life pivot that I didn’t feel wholly prepared for. But I jumped in. I had long conversations with our best tutors; I asked our wonderful parents for their thoughts and help; I played chess and chatted with a lot of kids. Then I got to work making the club the best place it could be. I’m still learning and we’re still growing, but I love the journey we’re on. Best of all, I work in a place where I get to constantly think, create, communicate, and innovate to make a safe, silly, and fun space for kids to fall in love with chess.
I truly can’t think of a job that’s a better fit for who I am and what I love. I never would have gotten here if it wasn’t for that incredible chess-filled summer in 2000. I never would have gotten here without Mr. Amore.
So if you know someone who might know someone who might know him, can you send them this blog post? I’d like to tell him about Camp Chesslandia! I’d like to tell him that I now spend my summers helping kids learn chess, just like he did 25 years ago. I’d like to tell him thank you.
And if you want to hang out with me this summer at camp, sign up here!
