[citation needed] Other notable players receiving lessons as children from Pandolfini include grandmasters Joel Benjamin, three-time U.S.

[citation needed] On the September 2015 USCF rating list, several of his students continue to be among the nation’s top ranked scholastic players.

[citation needed] Although Pandolfini hadn't played in many tournaments, he reached chess master strength by his late teens.

[8] In the summer of 1972, while still working at the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village, Pandolfini became an analyst for the PBS coverage of the "Match of the Century" when Bobby Fischer won the World Chess Championship from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Pandolfini served as an assistant to Shelby Lyman, the show's moderator, and at the time, America's top chess teacher.

Starting with private instruction and small seminars,[9] Pandolfini, with George Kane and Frank Thornally, formed U. S. Chess Masters, Inc., an educational organization that structured systematized programs to a wide range of players.

In 1973 the same group began teaching chess classes for credit at the New School for Social Research, the first such courses ever offered in America.

The book later (in 1992) became a Paramount Pictures film of the same title, in which Pandolfini, Josh’s real-life teacher, was portrayed by award-winning actor Ben Kingsley.

[citation needed] In 1990, Pandolfini was the chief commentator at the New York half of the Garry Kasparov–Anatoly Karpov World Chess Championship Match.

[17] Later that same year, he was the head coach of the American delegation to the World Youth Chess Championship in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

In addition to co-creating the Chess-in-the-Schools program[15] for public schools, Pandolfini has been associated with various private institutions, including long-time relationships with Trinity, Browning, Dalton, and Berkeley Carroll.

[citation needed] Pandolfini was a consultant to The Queen's Gambit, a 2020 American Netflix miniseries, where he also had a cameo role as a tournament director.

The latter he achieves by relentlessly posing relevant questions, until the student absorbs the process of determining reasonable options and making logical choices.

Most of his books display larger diagrams, often with verbalized explanations (instead of a mere series of notated chess moves), so that beginning and casual players can examine games with greater ease and comprehension.

One aspect that Pandolfini has codified nicely concerns planning, an area of chess thinking with which students tend to have difficulty.

[27][28] "Playing chess gives us a chance to start out life over again, and this time, no one has more money than us, no one is more beautiful, no one lives in a better neighborhood, and we all go to the same school.

Ninety per cent of my students give up on tournament chess when they get into junior high school and the main reason is that they can't stand losing.

"— ABC News Interview(On Bobby Fischer’s estrangement from competitive chess:) "After 1972, we lost so many great pieces of art.