From inside Cook County Jail, chess spreads across the globe

Kenyatta Hampton, who is awaiting trial at the Cook County Jail, shakes hands with an attendee of the International Chess Federation’s Chess for Freedom Conference at Cook County Jail’s Division 11 in the Little Village neighborhood, Thursday. Officials from the federation and corrections agencies across the globe visited Chicago for federation’s first Chess for Freedom Conference, where they partnered with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to explore how chess can be used to help rehabilitate incarcerated people. (Pat Nabong/Sun-Times)

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.