The room was unusually loud for a venue where more than a dozen international chess dignitaries were hunched over game boards, but then again, the room itself was an unusual setting for chess: the airy chapel of the Cook County Jail’s Division 11.
The relative noisiness did not seem to bother International Chess Federation President Arkady Dvorkovich, who smiled as he watched grand masters casually discussing moves with prisoners, and in at least one case, an inmate explaining the game to a novice from a Zambian delegate attending the federation’s “Chess for Freedom” conference.
