Sucks for Jayson that Wikipedia didn’t open its doors (and hive-brain) until 2001, otherwise he could have done some research, rather than speculating…

All about the history of chess on Wikipedia.

But speculating is fun.

And it should also be noted that in 1996, for Jayson (and so many others), the internet has indeed arrived. Based on other sources and entries, we’re pretty sure he was not only poking around in the galleries and chatrooms of an early AOL, but also connected, via a friend’s dad at Columbia, to an online chess forum that he loves to chatter about in other entries. For the first time, Jayson was able to log-on any time of the day or night and connect with similarly-ranked and well-matched fellow chess enthusiasts. And it was nearly the death of him.

–Eds.