“Chess the Hard Way” is the autobiography of Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, who was not only Canada"s first chess grandmaster but was Canada"s only grandmaster until the modern era. His career is remarkable. He was from a remote Indian town in Central Canada where there were no chess masters. Almost invariably, strong chess players only develop in places where there are other strong players. Almost all chess grandmasters have come from the major population centers such as New York, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The few exceptions are rare cases of genius, Carlos Torre from Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico and Sultan Khan from India at a time when India had no chess masters. Daniel Yanofsky falls into this category of genius, because he appears to have been almost entirely self taught.