History of the Springfield Chess Club

The history of chess in Springfield goes back to the days when Springfield was a little more than a small frontier town. An early printed reference to a Springfield Chess Club can be found in the Sangamo Journal in 1835, just 14 years after Springfield was founded and four years before it became the state capital. Unfortunately for the early citizens of Springfield, neither this club nor others founded during the rest of the 19th and early 20th centuries endured for long.

A longer lasting chess club formed in 1929, under the direction of Nils Pontenstein, Silas Schinneer, and Harlan Richards. This club was affiliated with the Springfield YMCA, then located on South 7th St. The first club championship was held in 1930. Pontenstein, a Swedish-born engineer who moved to Springfield in 1925, was the winner. He received the John W. Fee Trophy, named for the local jeweler who donated it. In 1931, Charles C. Mc Brian, lawyer and judge, defeated Pontenstein 2 games to 1, with one draw, to win the club championship. Mc Brian successfully defended his title in 1933. The Springfield Chess Club of the 1930s played matches against clubs in Chicago, St. Louis, Peoria, Bloomington, Decatur, and elsewhere. The club disbanded in 1934 but had a brief revival, with many of the same players, in 1938 and 1939. The next club, called the Capitol Chess Club, formed in 1955, but it was also short-lived. Gordon Winrod, Tony Montalbano, and Les Eastep were the organizers.

The immediate predecessor of the modern Springfield Chess Club was founded in 1966, organized by Jose Gonzalez, Jack Baldwin, and Josette Donnelly. The chess club of the 1960s met on Mondays at Bank of Springfield on Stevenson Drive, and Horace Mann, then located on Monroe Street. In 1968, it moved to the Easter Seals building, then on South 4th St. In 1969, Robert Hurst and Ronald Beckner organized the Checkmate Chess Club, thus Springfield briefly boasted two chess clubs! The Checkmate Chess Club met on Wednesdays at the Red Cross building on South 6th St, while the Springfield Chess club used several meeting locations over the next few years, including St. Peter and Paul's Church, the Springfield Recreation Department, and Sangamon State University, switching to Thursdays. The club began holding rated tournaments on a semi-regular schedule.

Bobby Fischer's unprecedented winning streak in 1971 and his victory in the World Chess Championship of 1972 led to a surge of interest in chess all over America. The Springfield Chess Club benefited, seeing a growth in membership and activity. This eventually led to the formal incorporation of the Springfield Chess Club, in its current form, on July 29, 1976. Thomas Knoedler, Garald Bumgardner, Thomas Barnard, Leonard Ferguson, the Van Buskirk brothers, and Jim Larson were among the club's founding members. The club adopted the Wednesday weekly schedule that continues today, and began meeting at Lincoln Park. In 1976, the club moved its regular meeting site to Washington Park. The club held tournaments in the Swiss, quad, and octagonal formats.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the club sometimes held simultaneous exhibitions, when one strong player played games against 20 or more challengers at the same time. The highest ranked player to ever give such an exhibition in Springfield was grandmaster Larry Christiansen, who zapped 22 players and gave up just one draw in an exhibition held at the Nelson Center in Lincoln Park on September 25, 1978. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the club held exhibitions at the Lincoln Fest street festival in downtown Springfield.

A monthly newsletter, the Chess Club News, was published in 1993 and 1994 by club secretary Bob Ladendorf. After a 17-year run at the Washington Park Pavilion, the club moved its meetings to American Legion Post 32, which was then located downtown, at the corner of 5th St. and Capitol Ave, on September 1, 1993, after the Park District began charging an hourly fee for use of the pavilion. The tournaments, now mostly in the four-round Swiss format, found a new home at the Hampton Inn. In the mid 1990s, the club resumed holding championship tournaments, and the big winner was Springfield attorney David B. Mote. In addition to Wednesday meetings, the monthly meetings at Barnes and Noble were established in 1994. The club organized an informal championship in 1998, and the victor of this event was Springfield master Doug Van Buskirk.

In 2000, the Board of Directors seated some new officers, and they began a program of revitalizing the club. David Long, having joined the club in 1997, restarted the newsletter as the Chess Club Observer. In 2001, the club organized a membership drive, restarted a club championship, and played two exhibition matches with the neighboring Jacksonville Area Chess Club. The regular tournaments moved to a larger venue, the Signature Inn. Membership increased, reaching 46 in 2003.

In 2003, the SCC hosted the Illinois Class Championship, the first time in years that any major state tournament had been held outside of metropolitan Chicago. The tournament, held the weekend following Thanksgiving, was dedicated to the memory of three-time club champion David Mote, who had died on October 11, 2003, at the age of 44. In the last few years of his life, David had worked as a federal public defender, and the 7th Circuit Court public defender's office published a memorial issue of their newsletter, the Back Bencher.

The club survived a downturn in membership and participation in 2004 to 2006. To keep solvent, the club reduced its tournament schedule to two or three tournaments per year. Participation began to rebound in 2007, and membership later stabilized around 25. In 2007, the club followed the American Legion to its new building on Sangamon Ave. In 2008, the club's internet site went online for the first time, and the club began using the Carpenters union hall and other sites to hold tournaments. In 2009, the club moved its Wednesday meeting site to the more spacious White Oaks Mall food court, catty-corner from Barnes and Noble, site of the Friday meetings. The club started a new membership drive and welcomed back many former members who had been unwilling or unable to play chess in the crowded, smoky Legion Hall. In 2013, the club began using Douglas United Methodist Church for its tournaments.

In 2016, the club held a membership drive to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its incorporation, and Jimmie Cecil created a Facebook page for the club. In 2018, the club began monthly meetings at Lincoln Library, to supplement the ongoing meetings at White Oaks Mall and Barnes and Noble. In 2019, the club restarted some competitive play at its weekly meetings, in the form of double round robin tournaments held over several weeks.

COVID spread around the world in 2020 and shut down recreational groups all across America, and the Springfield Chess Club suspended its meetings in favor of virtual meetings on chess.com, set up by Jimmie Cecil. After over a year's hiatus, the weekly meetings at White Oaks Mall were able to resume in the summer of 2021. The club counted itself lucky that none of its members died during the epidemic. Tournaments resumed in 2022 at the Southern View Village Hall. Membership and participation increased substantially from pre-COVID levels, with the club seeing its second-highest turnout in club history at a 2023 tournament.

Club Champions

1930: Nils Pontenstein
1931: Charles Mc Brian
1933: Charles Mc Brian
1969: Jon Kolber
1970: Wayne Epperson
1971: Carl Stanford
1972: Richard Beckner
1973: James Van Buskirk
1974: James Van Buskirk
1976: Don Townsend
1977: Tim Oltman
1978: Charles Van Buskirk
1993: David Mote
1994: David Mote
1998: Doug Van Buskirk
2001: David Mote
2003: Doug Van Buskirk
2004: Matt Cremeens
2005: Evan Dorosheff

Contributions and corrections to this page by current or former SCC members are welcome! Please pass copies of articles, photos, anything SCC related to one of the club officers at a regular meeting.

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