Bless you for being such a good son. And your father’s being blessed with a long and seemingly content life still keeping his brain challenged with the great game of chess. That’s fantastic!

Thanks much, Larry!

Enjoy the time with you Dad, Mike!  

Thanks much, Jim.

We played 2 games of chess yesterday and it's so amazing to me that at 98, Dad can still play chess. 

i give him my queen and have to assist him more and more with different items but he can still beat me.

He will sometimes want to take his own piece (same color) or move on the wrong diagonal. You would think that makes it impossible for a person like that to compete playing chess.

However, his strategies and tactics are still incredibly sound. This part of chess, uses analytical thinking that comes from the same part of the brain which solves math problems.

It's almost like a real world science experiment on an elderly person that makes details observations of actions on a chess board which define how his brain is functioning in different realms of thinking.

You would think that a person that can't tell the difference between his white piece and the opponents black piece a couple times in the game, a pretty important basic requirement to playing chess, would never be able to play skillful chess.

However, despite this flaw coming from a certain part of his aging brain, another part of his brain that is less compromised from age or that he was especially gifted with his entire life (analytical thinking) is not suffering much.

The part of his brain that calculates complicated strategies using the relationships of all the pieces on the board to each other and projects them out several moves.........continues to function at a level better than most young people.

It's actually mind boggling.

12 years ago, after mom's stroke and her turning into a near vegetable for 2.5 years, at a skilled nursing facility he completely lost his ability to think at every level, including analytical for several months. At 86, I figured his chess playing days were over.

However, I worked with him, teaching him some new stuff and he recovered from the depression of losing his wife of 56 years an bounced back even stronger!!!

After he turned 90, I found the story of our family chess to be compelling enough to share it with the world, using the  media via a press release to the local tv and newspaper outlets.

The 2nd link comes from Susan Polgar's site. She's, the most famous women's grand master in the world!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mg5a2DYyXQ

https://chessdailynews.com/never-too-old-to-learn-new-tricks/