"Here's a guy who lands here with his wife and starts this chess thing," said Jim Richardson, a photographer who has a gallery on Main Street. "We're all going, `Right, sure.' Next thing you know, Anatoly Karpov is in town."
"The Midwest still does have this inferiority complex," Richardson said. "We really do think that things happen somewhere else. Now they're happening here. A world champion is coming down the street, and we're part of the bigger world."
This year the US Chess Federation named Lindsborg as its "chess city of the year," a title that in past years it has given to large cities like New York, Seattle and Miami. It also chose Korenman, who is 44, as its "chess organizer of the year."
Korenman began staging tournaments soon after he arrived in Lindsborg, and at one of them he met a player who knew Karpov. That gave him the connection that turned this town into an elite chess center.
The tournaments have an important economic impact. Kathy Malm, executive director of the Lindsborg Chamber of Commerce, estimated that about 1,000 people will attend the three this month.
Becky Anderson, owner of the Swedish Country Inn, where several grand masters are staying this month, said chess was good for business and also good for the town's young people.
"The best impact I see is the number of people from abroad, especially from the former Soviet Union, that chess has brought here," Anderson said. "When you're as far from the coasts as we are, that's wonderful. I employ a lot of high school and college kids at the inn, and it's a great experience for them to meet people, often very young, who have distinguished themselves so much."
More than 100 local schoolchildren take regular chess lessons from Korenman, who is a serious player, though not a grand master. On one recent afternoon, he hovered above half a dozen of them as they clustered around a table. Several mothers sat nearby and watched.
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