Evil Killers Become Prison Chess Pals

The only thing scarier than the thought of these guys playing chess all hours of the day and night is the fact that this is a true story - I couldn't make something like this up if I tried. From the Daily Record.co.uk Jan 7 2008 By Amy Devine TWO of Scotland's worst killers have struck up a bizarre jail friendship over games of chess. Kriss Donald murderer Zeeshan "Crazy" Shahid and Marmion pub assassin Jamie Bain are close pals in the segregation unit of Glenochil prison. The evil pair keep their fellow jailbirds awake at night by shouting chess moves to each other through the walls of their cells. Bain, 23, also became best buddies with Crazy's sadistic brother, Imran "Baldy" Shahid, in Edinburgh's Saughton jail last year. And after the baby-faced gunman was transferred to Glenochil, near Alloa, he quickly found he had alot in common with Crazy. A jail insider told the Record: "Bain and Crazy are very friendly indeed.When they aren't locked in their cells they spend all their time at their doors talking. "They both have chess boards and spend hours and hours playing. They try to outwit each other with never-ending games. "They even shout out moves to each other at night, and the other cons have to play music on their radios to block out the noise and get some sleep." Bain clearly is not choosy about the company he keeps. The Record told last March how he became close to Baldy Shahid in Saughton even though no other cons would talk to him. A source said: "Baldy has nobody so he's chummy with Bain." Bain and Baldy whiled away their time trying to outdo each other with tales of the crimes they had committed. The source said: "The two of them have bodies piled up everywhere, the amount of folk they're supposed to have killed." Baldy, 30, and Crazy, 29, were caged in 2006 for the horrific racist murder of 15-year-old Kriss Donald in Glasgow. A gang led by Baldy snatched the nine-stone schoolboy off the street in Glasgow simply because he was white. As the thugs bundled Kriss into their car, he screamed: "I'm only 15! I'm only 15! What did I do?" The gang drove Kriss around Scotland for four hours before stabbing him 13 times and setting him on fire while he was still alive. Baldy, Crazy and a third gang member, Mohammed "Becks" Mushtaq,28, fled to Pakistan after the murder and spent more than a year on the run. Pakistani police tracked them down and they were flown back to Scotland, where they were convicted of racially aggravated murder. Judge Lord Uist told them they had carried out "a pre-meditated, cold-blooded execution" and had shown no remorse. Baldy was caged for 25 years, Crazy got 23 years and Becks was told he will serve at least 22 years. Cold-blooded Bain walked into the Marmion bar in Edinburgh with a sawn-off shotgun in 2006 and blasted former boxing champ Alex McKinnon to death. Bain also shot Alex's brother-inlaw James Hendry, who survived because his body fat stopped the shotgun pellets. The attack came after a yearlong feud between Bain and the family of his girlfriend Dionne Hendry, who is James's sister. Bain, a small-time crook in the Gracemount area of the capital, had beaten up Dionne and feared he would be attacked in revenge. He was high on cocaine at the time of the shootings and hid his face behind a horror moviestyle hockey mask. Alex, a former Scottish bantamweight champ, left a wife and a young daughter. Dionne, the mother of Bain's two children, stood by him after the shootings. Bain was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years but has been given leave to appeal. His accomplices, Richard Cosgrove, 21, and Ben Young, 19, got 20 and 19 years respectively. The Scottish Prison Service refused to discuss Bain's friendships, saying: "We do not comment on individual prisoners."

Prison Chess 2

As a follow-up to Prison Chess, what should I find tonight but an article about Karpov playing chess with Russian inmates! Karpov to play online chess with prisoners Posted online: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 0000 hours IST MOSCOW, JUN 26: Former World Champion Anatoly Karpov will play online chess with inmates of the Russian prisons on Wednesday. Russian agency Novosti on Tuesday reported that the prison inmates would be able to log on to Karpov's website and play online chess with him. The Federal Prisons office feels the exercise will help them check about the welfare of the inmates. "This online chess tournament would also give us a unique opportunity to test the integrated automated information system for the welfare of the prison inmates," the office said. ******************************************************************************* Well, I guess I'm just an old Democrat reactionary after all -- what the **** - an opportunity to test "the integrated automated information system for the welfare of the prison inmates?" Do they have microphones in the urinals?

Prison Chess

Some players are so desperate to play in a local rated tournament they will do just about anything - even go to prison :) Inmate, cellmate, checkmate! (The Barre Montpelier Times Argus) June 25, 2007 By Wilson Ring Associated Press NEWPORT — When a doctor, a lawyer, a software tester and three other people were buzzed through the heavy metal doors into the Northern State Correctional Facility one day recently, they weren't there to serve sentences. They were there for the competition — in chess. In a four-hour tournament recognized by the U.S. Chess Federation, the six civilians and 10 inmates from the prison chess club squared off in an event welcomed by players from outside and in. "One of the coolest things about this, is to play a rated game around here, I'd have to go to Foxwoods (the Connecticut casino) or Boston," said Bob Sassaman, of Calais, a veteran tournament chess player. While it's not uncommon for inmates to pass their time playing chess, what makes quality tournament chess in prisons is the influence of players from the outside. "Whether it's a prison club or regular club, they draw a variety of players. They don't differ much," said Joan Dubois, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee-based U.S. Chess Federation. "They will have their good players and their bad. The problem in a prison is you do not draw in outside people, the pool of players gets stagnant. They really need to play against new blood." And that's what the tournaments at the Newport prison accomplish. The prison chess club was formed in January by Bill Storz, a chess buff who teaches at the Northern State branch of the Community High School of Vermont, an education system run by the Vermont Department of Corrections. It held one tournament in April and another on June 15. "What you get out of it is what you put into it," said Storz, who founded the club as an extracurricular activity for the students. "I help guys pick up on some of the life lessons: ... Thinking through a sequence of events, what are the possible outcomes? If I do this for short-term benefit, without thinking of long term results, what really is the benefit of that?" Inmate Rick Doner, 32, of Rutland, said he and others play on their own, even when the club isn't meeting on Friday afternoons." The competition in here is actually better than I thought it was going to be," said Doner, who is serving 1-to-10 for grand larceny. The U.S. Chess Federation lists seven affiliated clubs in prisons, from Maryland to Massachusetts. (The Northern State club isn't on the list because it's listed through its connection to the school rather than the prison). In New Hampshire, inmates at the men's prison in Concord have a chess club, Corrections Department spokesman Jeff Lyons said. They play among themselves, not against outsiders. At Northern State, games are played in a small room in the school section of the prison, with the only sound coming from clicks when players hit their time clocks. Some games move quickly and are over within a handful of moves and a few minutes. Others take longer, the pieces staying on the board as each player maneuvers for advantage. Charles Aronowitz, a retired attorney from Montreal who teaches chess in an elementary school and has played in both of the tournaments at the Newport prison, finished second in April and 12th in the June 15 tournament. "These guys have improved in only two months," said Aronowitz. The top-rated player in the event was Newport urologist Armando Lopez, an "expert" under the chess federation's rating system. Not that the rating guaranteed a win; he lost in the title match to Sassaman, a software tester with a "B" rating. The prison's top-rated player, Al Hennessey, 28, of Burlington, who's serving a 2-to-10-year sentence for burglary, won the first tournament held at the Newport prison, in April. He finished fifth in the most recent one, and he says he looks forward to playing in more. He says he spends a good deal of his time studying chess strategy. "I have a lot more time on my hands," he said. On the Web:Community High School of Vermont: http://www.chsvt.k12.vt.us/ U.S. Chess Federation: http://www.uschess.org/ Hmmmm, there is something about this that really bothers me. I don't think the USCF should be promoting chess among convicted criminals. I don't have a problem with people in jail playing chess - but I wonder - if the benefits of chess are as touted by the scholastic people and assuming these criminals don't have atrophied brains - is chess teaching them how to be better criminals in the future, when they have served their time and/or get out on parole??? You know - learning how to plan ahead, foresee consequences, and execute both short-term tactics and long-term strategy? One might also wonder what might happen if, say, a jailed pedophile learns chess inside and - under the auspices of these USCF authorized tournaments, learns about the popularity of scholastic chess either through chatting with outside chessplayers and/or being exposed to USCF's magazines and promotional materials; and after he gets out, he becomes a "volunteer" at a local scholastic chess outreach program or involved in a grade school chess club. Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe.