Long Time Coming
Southeast Wisconsin has a long, rich history of chess. There are records of Paul Morphy coming to Milwaukee to give exhibitions scant years after Wisconsin became a state. City Chess Club in Milwaukee in concert with the Milwaukee Athletic club sponsored tournaments and matches to decide the best player in the state in the early years of the 20th Century.
And chess continued to play a role in Milwaukee civic life. In 1935, Milwaukee played host to the 36th American Chess Federation Congress and its American Open (the forerunner of today’s US Open). This was the first visit of this tournament to the city, and gave Milwaukee a chance to show off its most recent idea.
In 1932, the Milwaukee Public Schools Extension Department had introduced chess classes in its social centers, open to young and old. These courses continued, and were even expanded to provide instruction not only for the beginner, but for advanced players as well. By 1935, municipal chess leagues for four classes of players had been formed and 8 city tournaments were run every year.
Milwaukee is the first known city in the US to conduct chess classes on its playgrounds, with instructors moving from playground to playground teaching young and old the delights of the game. The children even had classes in which they constructed their own chess sets and boards.
At the time of the American Open in 1935, the Milwaukee Chess Club had rooms in the Republican Hotel which were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Several important events began then. See Arpad Elo and Fred Cramer, as well as the story of the Western Open.)
The vitality of chess in Milwaukee had some farther-reaching effects. Municipal recreation directors from Racine, Kenosha, West Allis, Wauwautosa, Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Madison, Sheboygan, and Two Rivers followed the “Milwaukee Plan”, and as other chess clubs spread across the state, it also attracted the attention of municipal recreation directors from around the country, including San Francisco and New York. (It should probably be noted as well that even as far back as 1935, Milwaukee also had a Women’s Municipal Chess Association.)
In 1934, The Milwaukee Athletic Club turned the State Championship over to the Wisconsin Municipal Recreation Association, which conducted the first official state championship tournament, with a total of 9 entries.
In the early 1950’s, Fred Cramer, Arpad Elo, Scott Kittsley and others joined together to bring a US Open to Milwaukee. The organization they created, now known as the Milwaukee Chess Foundation, organizes the longest continuously running open tournament in the state, the Western Open, running every year since 1955.
Remembering When
Over the years, southeastern Wisconsin has seen many strong tournaments, been the home of many strong players, and has been visited by many more. Here is our attempt to bring you their stories.
People
When we think of chess personalities, we tend first to think of grandmasters. The roster of grandmasters who have come to Milwaukee and given simultaneous exhibitions is long enough, but many have also come and played in our tournaments. Some, like George Koltanowski and Arnold Dake, taught chess to our kids as part of the city’s playground instruction program.
While grandmasters get most of the attention in chess, it takes many talented and hardworking people to make chess the successful community it is.
Here are some short biographies of the people whose contributions have brought chess in our area to the level it is at today.
Tournaments
The Milwaukee area has seen many strong tournaments in the past; some just stopped here a few times as they travelled around the the country, others, like the Western Open (the longest running open tournament in the state) have stayed here. Here are the stories and crosstables from some of them.