The Ivy Leaguers beat the convicts — but not all of them — in chess matches Friday that pitted inmates against four Princeton University students, including the son of a Nobel laureate.

In the end, two New Jersey State Prison inmates managed to defeat the students, while four others played them to draws. Fifty-eight inmates took part.

"I beat one of those guys," said Terrance Manley, 28, who is serving time for manslaughter. "And now I'm ready for the next one."

The Princeton students — after being frisked and ushered through the gates of the maximum-security prison — were struck by how the game could bring them into contact with people so different from them.

"It's about how you can take two diametrically opposed people and see how they relate," said Samson Benen, 18. "It's amazing."

Benen also noted how some of the prisoners played a different style of chess than the classical brand he was used to: "These players used more unusual positions."

Benen was joined by fellow students Brandon Ashe, 21, Ian Prevost, 20, and Jonathan Heckman, 21, the son of University of Chicago professor James Heckman, a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics.

Prison officials touted the chess match as a way to enhance the players' life skills.

"It teaches its players to think ahead, to recognize traps and avoid costly mistakes," state Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown said in a statement.

Many of the prisoners, however, were simply glad to be out of their cells doing something.

"This place is all about routines," said Samuel Cann, 37. "Things like this don't happen too often around here."

Cann, who is serving a life sentence for murder and kidnapping, did not win his match, but wasn't discouraged. "I'm sure if I was playing these guys in the yard I'd win some and they'd win some," he said.

The tournament, in which the four students played the inmates by walking board to board along long tables, was the third of its kind at the prison, which houses nearly 1,900 inmates and the state's death row.

Chess and other board games, along with watching television and working out, are among the few activities available to the inmates.

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