GM Wesley So's Journey And Gift To The Philippines

Like most of you I was not born rich. I came from a small town in the Philippines, and with little money or connections, the fact is my future wasn’t bright.

I thank God I was exposed to the study of chess at an early age. It disciplined my mind, trained me to focus on a goal, and taught me to think ahead and appreciate consequences. Chess eventually gave me a professional future that I never imagined in my wildest dreams.

I enjoy signing autographs for my many fans!

To try and move myself ahead I clipped out columns from newspapers, studied Xeroxed copies of chess books, and played games with my neighbors. In those days that was the best I could get.

Times have changed for me and in gratitude for my own success, I want to introduce Filipino parents and their children to a program called ChessKid.com. This interactive chess program designed by Chess.com was created especially for children aged 5 to 12. It is full of chess instruction, games, variants, tournaments, and special programing that challenges the mind and develops character.

Another tournament victory -- this is just after winning a Grand Chess Tour event in Belgium.

The point of studying chess is not to make you a Grandmaster (although you might become one -- why not?!) but to train your brain for perhaps even bigger endeavors.

My desire is that every Filipino child will have access to opportunities for development that were not available to me when I started. To this end I am partnering with ChessKid.com to make sure that if you want it, you can have it, at a price your family can afford.

This is my gift to you.

To sign up for my group and get the reduced price, click XXXhereXXX.

Nagmamahal, 

GM Wesley So

Guess who? It's the pretzel player!

And here I am winning an individual gold medal at the Olympics, with our national hero GM Eugenio Torre beside me on the right side of the photo.