Free public training Sunday Oct. 28 designed to teach consequences for every move

From 3pm until 5pm

At Crown Plaza O’Hare Airport hotel

5440 N River Rd, Rosemont, IL 60018

CHICAGO-- Former Alabama State Trooper and U.S. Air Force veteran Orrin “Checkmate” Hudson is on a nation-wide mission to change young lives using the game of chess to teach vital life lessons and he is coming to Chicago for his next move. “Like many others, I’m tired of reading about violence in the Windy City streets,” he explains. “My Be Someone Inc. organization has spent the past 17 years changing lives using chess boards not fists and guns.”

Hudson started his Be Someone non-profit organization in 2001 and has trained more than 64,000 young people how to fight with their brains not bullets.  He speaks in terms young people today can understand and he has experience to back up his street-cred. “I grew up in the inner-city of Birmingham.  I was destined to fail.  My resume was not pretty…. Foster child, gang member, petty criminal,” he says.

His life changed forever one day when a teacher saw the potential Hudson never realized he exhibited and sat him down in front of a chess board.  “At first I rebelled.  I’m not smart enough to learn this game and even if I did, so what.”  The patience of this teacher paid off and the “so what” came to be as Orrin slowly gave up the street life to turn things around. 

“I honestly believe my teacher using the game of chess not only changed my life, he saved it,” Hudson claims.   Several years removed from his high school days and well on his way to a successful life, Hudson saw a story about a New York robbery resulting in the murders of several young people.  He knew then he had to do something to pay back the debt he owed.  He developed a training program using chess aimed at young people – many of them  at-risk youngsters – as well as parents, guardians and counselors.

What he will be telling audiences at the Crown Plaza O’Hare Airport hotel October 28 , 3:00 pm to 5:00  pm  “Brains before  bullets; Think it out, don’t shoot it out; Head up, pants up, grades up, and, most importantly, don’t ever give up.”  Hudson stresses, “I teach young people something they are not being taught today, there are consequences for every move they make, whether it is on the chess board or in life.  I teach them to think ahead and to be givers in this life,  not takers.”

The Be Someone training is two hours long, open to the public and free.  Hudson, a chess champion, will set up multiple boards and will take on competitors while at the same time presenting his life-changing messages.  “I welcome young people but I also invite parents and guardians – especially single moms who need new tools in raising their children through the mine field of life.”

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Chess in Chicago 2-2-2

Hudson requests registration be made at info@besomeone.org and invites interested attendees to visit the organization’s web site at www.besomeone.org to learn more about him and his program.  This is not his first visit to Chicago.  He was here last year as part of the Disney team promoting the movie “Queen of Katwe” about a young girl who escaped her brutal life in a slum in Kampala, Uganda, after she was taught how to play chess.  That changed her life just as it did Hudson’s.

“I knew I had to return to Chicago to do what I could to help,” he explains. ”This visit might be said to be a leap pf faith since I have no formal partnerships arranged.  But faith has seen me take an idea and build it into an effective organization making a difference in young lives.  I can’t wait to meet Chicagoans, October 28.”