Two-time national chess champ Lior Lapid ’04 ’11 is betting his career that the road to successful K-12 education can be paved with chess pieces.

Earlier this year, 29-year-old Lapid won the Southern Rocky World Chess Federation Open against a top-rated international chess master, but his ultimate goal is to open a chess academy in New Mexico.

Lapid has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in political science from New Mexico State University. In November, he will present a paper at a conference at the University of Texas at Dallas on the benefits of chess in education. Studies have shown that chess education for children has a positive effect on their math and reading scores.

“There are good reasons that more than 30 countries worldwide have adopted chess into the elementary school curriculum,” he says. “In this country, the states of New York and Idaho have been experimenting with the idea as well.”

Lapid turned down a Ph.D. program at the University of California, Irvine to pursue a career in chess education. After running a series of summer chess camps for children in Albuquerque, he is teaching chess in various elementary schools this fall.

“It’s very hard to imagine what my life would be like had I never learned chess. I’ve often tried,” Lapid says. “Chess is at the core of my identity, and I realized this after I spent a few years away from the game and felt that a part of me was missing.”

Lapid’s father, Yosef Lapid, an NMSU political science professor, recognized his son’s remarkable talent early on.

“I have no doubt that the game helped develop his analytical skill and his sense of strategy and patient planning,” Yosef Lapid says. “There is extensive literature on the diverse and multiple benefits of chess and, thanks to Lior, I am very familiar with most of them. I sincerely hope that in the future we will be better able to harness these benefits to our educational efforts in New Mexico and in the United States.”

Last spring, Lior Lapid’s students in Los Alamos won the National K-3 Team Blitz Championship in Dallas.

“One of them came up to me afterwards and proclaimed, ‘Lior, you’re the best teacher in the world!’ and gave me a hug,” he says. “Moments like these are the moments teachers live for. Yes, I have played a gambit. I would have been making more money right now, however, I played this move because I anticipate a successful and fulfilling career in the long run. I love working with children, I love teaching, and I love chess.”