---

I suppose I ought to start at the beginning, even though Idaho and chess came a lot later. I was a Navy brat, born at the base hospital in San Diego in January, 1950. I grew up on the coast, primarily in southern California, until Dad retired after 20 years and we moved to Kuna, Idaho in 1963. I attended Kuna High and graduated in 1967, then spent a year at the U of I in Moscow.

I married a Melba girl, Anna Pline, in 1969 and we adopted our only son, Bill Jr., when he was born in December, 1977. I worked several places until 1977, when my wife and I started our own business. For the next 18 years, we owned and operated a wholesale battery business in Caldwell. In 1992, I went back to school, receiving my degree in accounting from Boise State in May, 1995. At this writing, in the summer of 1997, I'm still happily married (28 years this October), I'm the support supervisor for an accounting software company called Quality Design Systems in Eagle, and my son, Bill Jr., is starting his sophomore year at Boise State. We live in Nampa now and, with all the changes in the past few years, my chess life seems like a hundred years ago.

I first learned how to move the pieces in a Junior High gym class in Long Beach, CA. White Jr. High was designed to hold 1500 students and, as there were 3500 of us, we had to put up with some unusual conditions at times. When it rained hard there were too many of us to use the indoor gym at the school, so the classes would take turns on a rotating basis playing whatever indoor sport was in season. The other classes had to spend their time in classrooms keeping quiet so the coaches had no excuse to assign laps or use their paddles. One way of passing the time was to play checkers or chess. A couple of friends of mine spent three rainy periods teaching me how the pieces moved and some basic strategy such as never move your pawns too far forward or the other guy can take them, or always move your rook pawns out two squares at first so your rooks can be used immediately. Obviously, Fischer and Spassky spent the rest of the three periods beating up on me pretty badly. So much for that sport.

My next encounter with chess came in 1973, when I was working as the freezer mechanic on swing shift (3 to 11 pm) at Birdseye's vegetable processing plant in Nampa. The electrician on my shift, a person of strong opinions and powerful voice (a blowhard braggart), was one of those annoying guys who constantly moves from one hobby to another and insists on boring all within hearing on the finer points of each hobby as it moves through his life. My fellow workers and I had already learned about raising dogs, raising fish, raising birds, and finally, firing greenware. This last hobby led to his painting the resulting ceramics and, of course, dragging them in to demonstrate his prowess to all of us lesser beings at work. Ugh! One day, though, he brought a chess set in that he had fired and painted, along with a fold up board. The maintenance mechanic and one of the supervisors played a couple of quick games with him during a slow period between shifts and he won both times. Great! Now he had another way to annoy us! From that night forward, he spent all of his spare time scrounging around for another sucker to beat up on, and I was one of his regular victims.

Cut to daytime at the local mall. I was walking through the mall with my wife one Saturday and there, on a rack in front of Pay Less, in living color, in paperback, for only $.65, was a copy of one of the great tomes of chess history. Yes, I bought Fred Reinfeld's 'The Complete Chessplayer!' When I got home, I looked through it and it was absolutely filled with things that I had no idea existed; things like tactics, strategy, openings, end games, and traps. I also found that my oppressor was using the very first opening in the book, the center game, to flatten us. I read about some of the ways that I had been beaten, then went out and bought a cheap travel set and started going through the openings and games in the little book of miracles.

Within a short time the Fischer of the maintenance crew could not beat me anymore, so he went on to tying flies. I, on the other hand, was hooked. I found a couple of other books in the next few months, but there was a serious shortage of opponents in the area and I almost lost interest. Then, a friend of mine told me about the Boise Chess Club, which met every Wednesday night in the YMCA at that time. I went the following week, afraid that I would be wiped out by some laughing Grandmaster without a chance, but when I showed up, a very friendly man named George Rasor greeted me. He talked to me for a while, then took me over to the playing tables and introduced me to John Streiff, another player with limited experience. We played four games that night, no brilliancies I am sorry to say, and I won two of them. The club had a new member.

Shortly after I joined, the club began to meet at BSU and I went with them. Over my first few months in the sport, I met some of the people who dominated and changed the face of chess in Idaho for the next couple of decades. At that time, Dick Vandenburg ran the club. His rating, if memory serves, was about 2040, making him about 200 points above the next strongest player in the area. Since there is a strong caste system in chess, I rarely spoke, or spoken to, by this demi-God, but I did get to watch some of his skittles games and I was in awe of the way he could play, visit, and wander around all at the same time, yet still win. As an unrated, I still had to spend quite a bit of time concentrating on the position since I had no sight of board yet.

Another player with whom I became acquainted was Larry Parsons, our first resident Master. Larry was a BSU student at that time and carried a rating of about 1825. Steve Ryals was a friend of Parsons and Vandenburg, a future ill, and had a lot to say about how the club was run. These three were the center of the club when I first joined. Their success at drawing and keeping members led to the largest tournaments in Idaho history and I fondly remember going to BSU to play in a tournament with 70+ players, something that has not happened since the Fischer boom and the days of the terrible trio.

My first tournament experience came at the 1974 Idaho Open. I defeated a lady named Bonny, rated 1494, in my first game, got slaughtered by a high class C rated, cigar smoking, very distracting old guy named Walt Young (6-0 against me lifetime! I was always afraid of him for some reason.) and ended up with a 2.0-3.0 score and a 1481 rating, as well as prize money for a third place tie in my division. I was hot!

Then came reality. There was not a lot of activity in the area and, although I played in every tournament available for the rest of the year, that only came to three more, totaling 14 games. My rating slipped to my all time low of 1349 following the Western Idaho Open in December.

Then came my best tournament yet. In the club championship of 1975 I drew with Larry Parsons, the Idaho State Champion, in round 1, lost to Greg Perryman, the new Champion, in round 2, then beat a class D, two class C's, and a class B in successive rounds. In the final round, I had a drawn position against Steve Ryals, but forgot how to hold the K + R vs. K + R + P ending and lost. I scored a 1788 performance rating in that tournament, my best until the early 80's, and was back in class C for good.

The next few years were static for me, as I stayed in the 1400's, went to the club about once a month, played in almost all of the tournaments, and didn't seem to improve. It was disheartening, to say the least. The high point for me was going to the Nampa club, which boasted three of the nicest people I have ever met in the sport. Jerry Stanke was the leader of the three musketeers. In his 60's at the time, he was rated in the 1700's, talked with a squeaky voice, helped anyone who asked, ran the club, and loved end games. It was impossible to practice openings against him since he never followed standard lines. It seemed to me that his only aim in the opening was to reach a Rook and pawn ending, where he was supreme. Abram Ellis was the club's strongest player, rated in the low 1800's, and a real card. Abie was a tactical player who loved to attack. He played fast, sacked pieces and pawns without flinching, and was unbeatable to someone of my strength. The final member of the threesome was Ezra Brumbach, a sheep farmer from Adrian, OR. He played the French defense almost exclusively, was a lover of closed positions, and was the closest to my strength of the group. I never played him in a tournament, but the first time I managed a win at the club made my day! These three were the center of chess at the West end of the Treasure Valley throughout the 70's and I think they were one of the strongest influences on my decision to stay in the game.

In 1978, we moved back to Caldwell and opened our business. My son had been born the year before and began getting into everything that year. My postal play, which was very active, began to suffer because of lack of time and interference from the changes in my life and I slipped from class A postal to a low B rating. Over the board, I was still floundering in the 1400's. I became discouraged in 1979 and quit play for almost two years.

When the game called me back in 1981, things had changed greatly on the local scene. There were several new people running things and I got along with them very well. John Letterman was the new club President, Paul Johnson and Jeff Roland were rising stars in the club, and I met Robert Vasquez, my best friend for the next decade. Other players who came on the scene while I was taking a vacation who became important locally and personally were Joe Kennedy, several times Idaho State Champion, Dan Drumm, whose strength always seemed to be on a par with mine even though our styles were 180 degrees out (imagine a computer playing Bozo the Clown in a tournament-Dan liked to think, I liked to talk), and Stewart Sutton, who had been around in the South for awhile but had recently returned from New Mexico and was moving up in rating very rapidly. Future state Champions Les Colin and Mike Henderson also were active at this time. Though they may have been around earlier, this was the first time I noticed them since I had little chance to play the state's top players. These were some of the people who would run chess and dominate play in the 80's.

Within a year or so, Letterman would leave for North Carolina and Jeff and Paul would take over running the club. I made friends with them and when the annual elections rolled around Jeff asked me to run for Secretary. I said OK. Additionally, he wanted me to get a tournament director’s card and help run tournaments for the club. Again, I said OK. With Jeff's help I got a card, was elected, and started branching out in the sport. Eventually, my organizing, officer, and ill duties became a lot more important to me than my rating, something that would have seemed impossible at the time.

My play was finally improving, too. My first tournament was (again) the Idaho Open, and I scored 2.5-2.5, playing five 1600 rated players. My rating went over 1500 for the first time. Within a year, I was in the mid-1600's myself and feeling better about my game. Things had finally begun to click.

By 1984, I was a high class B player, but directing and organizing tournaments was more important than playing. I continued to help Jeff run tournaments and started running some on my own. The first one I organized and directed alone was the Idaho Class Championship, held at the Intermountain Gas meeting room. Things worked out well and I continued planning others.

Twice, I tried holding tournaments in Canyon County. Both Caldwell Opens were held in the meeting room at the Caldwell Library, but I only managed 19 and 21 players in the two events, so I kept all my other efforts in Meridian and Boise. It seemed that people did not want to travel 20 miles to play!

In 1985, the Club moved to the Shoshone Center in Meridian. Paul was President at the time. That winter the President of the Treasure Valley Bridge Club, Bruce Ferguson, from whom we rented the rooms, asked if we would be interested in writing a column in the Statesman. At the time, there was a little chess puzzle appearing each week and he felt we could replace it with something with a local flavor if there was someone willing to make a commitment to having a readable column turned in each week by the deadline - without fail.

I thought it would be kind of fun (you may have noticed that this is not a half page roundup. I enjoy talking), and would draw new members to the club. The idea of a column in the Statesman seemed to me to be a cheap (read that free) way to advertise and draw in new members to keep things from getting too stale. Though it worked out that way, it also turned out to be a heck of a lot more work than I ever expected. I had written a postal chess column, This Bill is Overdue, for Jeff in the Idaho Chess News a couple of years earlier, but a bi-monthly deadline is considerably different from a weekly one. Fortunately, my business gave me the flexibility to spend extra time in the game, and since volunteers are at a premium in any activity I decided to continue giving up the time to try to build membership.

I cranked out a local interest column called Idaho Chess from 1986 through 1992, spending a lot of time on it. There was a bonus in the deal; however...I played so many games each week that my rating went up almost by itself I reached class A in 1988 and briefly hit expert just before I quit play to go back to school in early 1992. I went 5½ out of six in my last two tournaments, both quads, against all A and expert strength players and topped out at 2038. I also served two two-year terms as club President, two years as Vice President, and two years as Secretary and was elected to a term as President of the Idaho Chess Association.

Most important to me, though, were the numbers of new players that were coming to the club. While in Meridian we peaked at 66 paid members, which I felt was not bad for a city of about 120,000. We had two consecutive club championships with over 40 players, still a record for the event, and the members had the chance in 1989 to play in over 60 rated games without leaving town if they played in all of the Idaho Chess Association and Boise Chess Club events that were offered. In addition, we held speed events, team events, express chess, and a night each month that was reserved for skittles play.

Some of my favorite events, however, were team matches against other clubs. I was lucky enough to be team captain for several of these events, beating the Reno Chess Club 4 times straight, the Utah team in our only win against them, and a ½ point loss in a three-way match with Montana and Wyoming. These matches drew some of our very best players and I really enjoyed playing on the same team with people like Parsons, Kennedy, Colin, Henderson, Sutton, and other regular participants like Hugh Myers, who never missed a match, Arnold Henderson, who always played his best in these events, and Dan Drumm, who was always in the seat either above me or below me, making snide remarks about my play. The personalities were often more interesting than the play in my opinion.

Our best match, however, was the club's only online event. Over 20 players from the club showed up on a Saturday, broke up into two teams, and fed and received moves through our local guru, Hugh Myers, in a two game contest with the Headquarters team from USCF. Their team had played several matches around the country, losing only to the San Diego Chess Club, which sported two grandmasters in their match. Dan Drumm and I led the black team against the USCF office staff, losing in a long Pirc. State Champion Mike Henderson, with Dick Vandenburg, Joe Kennedy, and Les Colin as the top players on his team, played white against the USCF magazine staff, led by a high Master. Our people pulled out a win on time in a very tight position, making us only the second team in the country to score a point against the USCF horde.

Memories like these, mixed with my first wins over many of the people who were important in the game locally, losses that hit me out of the blue by much lower rated players, out of state tournaments with Vasquez (mostly to Nevada home of the easy slots and those beautiful blackjack tables), skittles between rounds in tournament after tournament, and the people I was lucky enough to meet through the game, these are what I still have from my two decades in Idaho chess. It does not pay as well as a job, it is not fast moving like the MTV my son insists is REALLY entertainment, and it was a lot of work spread over 20 years. I spent considerably more time and effort reaching Expert and working as an organizer than I ever did getting my degree. It does not matter. I would not trade my experiences in the game for any thing. I hope the game never dies locally and I do not think it ever will with the type of people I met doing their part to support their favorite pastime.

© 2006 The Idaho Chess History Project