The California Chess Reporter - Volume 7

Chess historians and collectors consider the California Chess Reporter the gold standard for California chess magazines. It has combined all the pertinent information that a chess historian looks for: who played in what tournament, club or league, when and where it was played, and, of course, the game scores. The match results, club results, league results, tournament cross tables, and game scores that appeared every month for both Northern and Southern California answered all of these criteria and more. In 1967-1971 chess activity increased throughout the state. No longer were players playing primarily for the honor and the glory. They wanted the money. Class tournaments started being held, where players would compete in the Class A, Class B or Class C sections for big cash prizes.

Strong new players developed either because they were young players who just got better or because they came to California from other places or both. Examples of both were Walter Shawn Browne and Julio Kaplan, both of whom came to California at age 17. Browne was born in Australia but grew up in Brooklyn. When he came to California in 1967 he was already the US Junior Champion. He proceeded to win almost every tournament he played in, including the California State Championship. A great new series of tournaments was established in Lone Pine in 1971. It eventually became annually the strongest Swiss System tournament in the world. First winner was Larry Evans who moved to nearby Reno, Nevada. The new player who had the biggest impact on the California Chess Reporter was Jude Acers, who moved here from New Orleans. Acers won several tournaments. Acers proceeded to provide numerous articles and chess analysis that filled up the pages of the California Chess Reporter. If you read it here, it was probably written by Acers.

Kerry Lawless has been working for years and years, at least 25 years that I know of and probably a lot longer than that, on compiling every game he can, published and, where possible, unpublished that has ever been played in the State of California. The result of this great work is his website ChessDryad.com and his database calgames.pgn that contains at present 37,598 games, all played in the State of California from 1856 to the present. All of the games in California Chess Reporter here are also in his downloadable calgames.pgn database but in Algebraic Notation. Kerry Lawless has also been making great efforts to compile all chess publications published in the State of California and, as much as possible, all articles about California chess. One result of these efforts is he has compiled every issue of the California Chess Reporter during its 25 year run from 1951 to 1976. At great personal expense to himself he has had all these volumes bound by a professional binding service. These bound volumes created by Kerry Lawless have been used to make these reprints.