How an Inmate Became America's #2

The year is 1997, Garry Kasparov is playing a six-game match against Deep Blue, Viswanathan Anand has won FIDE's new World Championship Qualifier, Karpov is on top of the chess world, and a murderer named Claude Bloodgood is ranked 2nd in the United States. Claude Bloodgood is serving life in prison, yet has reached a peak rating of 2789 USCF. This is the true story of how an inmate became America's #2.

Troubled Beginnings

Claude Frizzell Bloodgood II was born on July  14th, 1937 in Norfolk, Virginia, despite claiming to be born in Germany or Mexico. In the late 1950s, Bloodgood was a chess organizer and rating statistician for the Virginia State Chess Federation. At the time, he rated himself at 1956. Bloodgood had played in USCF tournaments in the late 1950s. Unfortunately, back in the '50s, since was no such thing as the internet; there is no recording of Bloodgood's early tournaments. The only listing I could find was in a "Chess Life" article published on March 5, 1958. 

In the early 1960s, Bloodgood was twice convicted of burglary and spent time in prison, he was also convicted of forging checks from his parent's bank accounts. His parents were to press charges, but then his father died, and his mother agreed to prosecute her son. Claude threatened to kill his mother when he got out of jail. Claude was a man of his word. Just 9 days after being released in 1969, he murdered his mother. He was given the death sentence. Lucky for Bloodgood, his death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment after Furman v. Georgia, a U.S. supreme court ruling that deemed the death penalty unconstitutional. After a few unsuccessful appeals, it was decided that he would spend the rest of his life in the Powhatan Correctional Center.

Chess Behind Bars

As a USCF tournament director, Claude Bloodgood began organizing tournaments within the prison. We don't know when Claude Bloodgood started organizing tournaments, however, we do know that it was before October 1973 according to Jim Paterson, who met Bloodgood through a private postal group. Bloodgood was very excited to host tournaments, he knew that he could manipulate the rating system due to the close pool of opponents. His plan was simple and allowed him to slowly gain a rating as the best chess player within the prison walls. 

Bloodgood's idea was to register inmates for the United States Chess Federation (USCF), he would arrange for prisoners to lose to new prisoners. Since the new prisoners were playing their provisional games, they would have higher ratings before losing to Bloodgood. Each time he would win a game, he would gain a few rating points. The process was slow, but it paid off. His rating peaked at 2789.

Claude Bloodgood was the 2nd highest-rated player on the USCF top 100 behind GM Gata Kamsky. Obviously, his strength wasn't quite there, but since his rating was so high, he qualified for the US Chess Championship. The United States Chess Federation ran an investigation, and in the end, Bloodgood wasn't invited to the event, and USCF changed its rating system to prevent "closed pool" rating inflation. 

The Games & Books of Claude Bloodgood

Claude Bloodgood wrote a handful of books in prison, all surrounding openings (shown above). Now obviously Bloodgood didn't have the strength of a 2700-rated player, but there are 65 games of his on chessgames.com. Here are a few of his games, all featuring his signature Grob opening. 

Claude Bloodgood's style is extremely peculiar and unconventional, he first opens the game with the Grob opening, an opening that is practically considered a "troll" opening nowadays. However, Claude's games do not impress me, they are relatively simple and don't show much positional understanding, rather he is just throwing pieces at the king until his opponent makes a blunder. I would think Bloodgood's strength to be around 1800-2100. 

Conclusion

Later in life, Bloodgood made a few claims to be released from prison. He claimed to have been born in Germany or Mexico but he still remained in prison. He died in Powhatan Correctional Center of lung cancer on August 4, 2001. Bloodgood by far has one of the most interesting chess careers and is likely the weakest 2700 of all time. We will never see a player like Claude Bloodgood again.

As always, thanks for reading. Here are the sources that I used to write the blog: Wikipedia, chessgames.com, Hans Ree's article, Claude F. Bloodgood Collection, and Bloodgood's USCF Page. Share your thoughts in the comments below, and as always, see you next time.