I should have noticed it before. I naturally assumed that Jason Rebello was a promising young chess player, perhaps a junior champion, that I had never heard of before, or perhaps he was an extremely wealthy person who had decided to donate a few million dollars to chess.
I was astounded when glancing through the December Chess Life to stop at the full page devoted to Jason Rebello and discover that he is not a chess master or a promising junior player at all. Rather, Jason Rebello is a jazz musician who knows the legal moves of chess.
Thinking that there must be more of a reason why his picture should be on the cover of Chess Life and a lengthy interview of him inside the pages of the magazine, I decided to read the interview, which is on page 55. There, I found a plug for the Jason Rebello website. I went to that website thinking I might find something about chess, which is at http://www.jasonrebello.co.uk, and what I found is a place where you can enter your credit card number and thereby obtain pictures of Jason Rebello, music by Jason Rebello and a variety of other commecial items of great interest about Jason Rebello.
Now, what is it about Jason Rebello that merits a cover story and a full page inside Chess Life? It turns out that he is really good at chess, so good in fact that not only can he presumably move the pieces legally, but he was even able to play in a simultaneous chess exhibition. Note: He did not give the exhibition. He played in it against someone who was playing many other players at the same time.
I understand that this was done to increase public interest in chess and to promote newsstand sales.
However, I will tell you how to do that. Take a look at the picture of Jason Rebello on page 55 of the December Chess Life. Standing behind Jason Rebello you will see a beautiful woman. Her name is not provided, and you probably think that she is another Jason Rebello groupie. However, to the contrary, she is a real authentic chess master, who is probably standing there to make sure that Jason Rebello does not make any illegal moves on the chessboard. Give that lady a name and put her picture on the cover of Chess Life, and then you will see newsstand sales take off.
Sam Sloan http://www.samsloan.com/chess.htm http://www.uschess.org