This week’s spotlight falls on Kyle Haining, a current software developer. He’s also a national master in chess, ranking him among the top percentage of players in the United States.

Kyle has been playing chess since the first grade when he had a meaningful introduction. He found a book on chess at school that caught his interest and took it home with him. At the time, Kyle’s father had cancer which limited the activities he was able to do. However, Kyle’s father found that he could teach Kyle to play chess, so that is just what he did! 

To this day Kyle attributes a large part of his success in chess to his dad, as well as to his coaches and friends who helped him along the way.

Now, Kyle sees many benefits he gained from the game of chess. Some of these have been particularly important to the development of his career programming and coding. Among these are critical thinking skills and coping with losses. Check out the full article on our Chess4Life blog and watch Kyle’s interview, including one of his matches, on our Youtube channel here!