The History of Chess in Sacramento 1934-1996

by Scott Gordon

revised October 1996

This document contains, to the fullest extent of the information I have acquired, a summary of chess activity in Sacramento since the founding of the Capitol City Chess Club in 1934, to 1996.

Chess in Sacramento has been blessed in a number of ways. First, we are lucky to have a bona-fide city charter that obligates the city to provide us with a playing facility. Second, we have had unusually good local media coverage in comparison to other comparable cities. Third, we are a charter affiliate member of the U.S.C.F. Finally, our central state location has allowed us to draw tournament participants from the bay area to the west, and the Reno area to the east. Since 1934, the club has remained virtually constant with regards to size and level of activity.

Although these records appear to indicate frequent change with regards to titles and tournaments, some constants are worth noting. First would be the titles "Sacramento City Champion", "Capitol City Chess Club Champion", and "Highest Ranked" (or "rated", be it by a ladder or USCF rating), which appear almost every year. Second would be the annual Team Tournament, which has become a tradition since 1971. I am missing much of the information on this event, as is evident by this document. Help in this area is needed to fill in all of the missing information.

Some of the information contained in this document had to be inferred from old and incomplete documentation or newsletters. I have tried to include only "official" rankings and confirmed information, with the following exceptions: Top-10 rankings marked with an asterisk(*) were inferred from league match board numbers (all others are official); and some presidential information is from *my* memory. These are noted with a question mark. There is a particularly interesting page titled "Sacramento Chess Publications", which is a sort of bibliography of Sacramento chess. Information in this document was accumulated through these sources, and from personal communications with a few individuals. There are literally thousands of game scores in my possession representing all of the top players listed in this document. A book of the "best games of Sacramento chess" would be very interesting, but a monumental task the likes of which I am unlikely to take on in the near future.

It is important that I mention those without whom this document could not possibly have been made. First, I was fortunate to spend about two hours talking with Milton Meyer shortly before his death. His widow Mayme Meyer was most generous with her time and provided me with Milton's records, which were virtually complete. She in turn referred me to the widow of Neil Austin. Mrs. Austin had likewise kept all of Neil's records. Dr. Richard Fauber graciously allowed me to spend about four hours in his study looking at each of his 20+ years of weekly Sacramento Bee columns. Joe Bender got my search started by recalling what he could of local chess in the 50's and 60's. Finally, I was able to talk on two occasions with Dr. Yuke, to my knowledge the last surviving charter member of the Capitol City Chess Club. As of 1988 he was still in excellent health, and was still somewhat interested in chess. He visited our club once or twice after our phone conversations. He was able to identify some of the individuals in the early chess club photos, and provided me with a few more photos.

If you have information to add to or to correct this, or any local newsletters etc. that you would like to add to the "archives", please contact Dr. Scott Gordon, Computer Science Department, Sacramento State University, (916) 278-7946, email: gordonvs@ecs.csus.edu.

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