The Library at Colorado Springs
The Library at Colorado Springs
By Paul Anderson
Colorado Springs Chess Club President
The Colorado Springs Chess Club is an affiliate of USCF and meets every Tuesday night for OTB chess. We typically have a month-long, Swiss tournament (G/90+30) at 6:00pm. See the calendar for details:
https://sites.google.com/view/colorado-springs-chess-club
I have been attending the club since 1997. After a couple of years, I was nominated to become an officer of the club. The club was run by a triumvirate, and I was the 4th nominee. I kind of got the feeling that I was only nominated so that the members who liked club politics could have something on which to motion, second, and vote at the annual meeting. The top three vote-getters would become the officers for the upcoming year. I came in 4th.
While I was flattered to be nominated, I did not want to win. I did not want to get sucked into any club politics. I did not want any responsibility for running the club. I just wanted to play chess. I don’t know if I received any votes, but I didn’t even get my own vote; I voted for the other three nominees. Fortunately, I was spared any club responsibility other than trying to push my rating over 1800 before Paul Grimm did the same.
Paul Grimm was the editor of the Colorado Chess Informant at the time and announced his plan to break 1800. Having played Paul several times (+2-0=1), I could not allow him to beat me in any fashion. Although, he did draw me once.
In 2004, I crossed over 1800 in the Winter Springs Open well ahead of Paul Grimm, whose plan had backfired. So, I had to pick someone new to beat to 1900. Since Larry Wutt had peaked at 1867 in 2003 and was #5 on my Most Wanted Chess Enemies list, he seemed like the ideal opponent to surpass.
In 2008, I crossed over 1900 in the 3rd Al Ufer Memorial well behind Larry Wutt, who broke 1900 in 2007 on LM Brian Wall’s watch. The only satisfaction I was able to take from coming in second was that I did pass Larry’s rating in that event.
I even wrote about it in an article for the Informant sixteen years ago, in which I challenged Larry in a race to 2000:
https://www.coloradochess.com/informant/April_2008.pdf#page=20
In 2009, I crossed over 2000 in the Pikes Peak Open well ahead of Larry Wutt, who finally broke 2000 in 2015.
In 2012, the triumvirs broke up, and I was enlisted to be the third officer of the Colorado Springs Chess Club. The ratings gains were to be a thing of the past, and my chess life was to become a world of club politics and responsibilities.
This time, I was more agreeable, seeing as nobody else wanted to do it, and I had more seniority than most members of the club. One of my first responsibilities was to take over the management and operation of the club library.
I was given the Green Book. This was a notebook with the names of members who checked out a book and the title they checked out. The original bookkeeper had a system where each title had its own page and the names were added below and crossed off as the book was returned. However, the next bookkeeper abandoned this idea and started a new record keeping system where dates, names, and titles were recorded on a line to get more entries per page. I guess his fear was that, with the increasing number of books the club was collecting, the Green Book would run out of pages to record them all. This did not happen, as I moved away from using the Green Book to more modern technology.
In 2018, I started a database for the library and have logged 161 books to date as members have donated, checked-out, or checked-in books. The Green Book has served its purpose, and it has highlighted a problem: Some books don’t get returned for years. The past club officers may have been responsible for the lack of returns by not requiring due dates or limiting the number of check-outs. So, to remedy this problem the current officers have implemented some new policies for 2024.
- Any member can view books on site.
- Only Supporting Members can check out books (limit 3 at a time)
- Book are due on the Supporting Member’s expiration date
Currently, the club has 37 books on record as checked-out. There could be more out as I have not audited the Green Book yet to see which books might have been returned and not crossed-off. We are asking everyone, who is not a current Supporting Member and has a club book, to please return it as soon as possible. The list of 37 known books is included at the end of this article.
Larry Wutt (below) is donating some of his library of chess media to the club. However, before we add them to the club’s collection, he has offered them to anyone free of charge. In July, I will begin to move whatever is leftover to the club’s collection. So, please stop by the club on Tuesday night if you are interested in adding some books, DVDs, or software to your chess library.
In addition to the club database, I have decided to check books in and out by taking a photo of them. One, it helps remind me to log the information into the database, and two, it provides an image for people to browse the library online. You can the images with this link:
If you would like to vote on the CSCC selling their books, use the form at the bottom of the page:
https://sites.google.com/view/colorado-springs-chess-club/support
Colorado Springs Chess Club’s Library - Books On Loan
- Alex Freeman Rate Your Endgame by Edmar Mednis & Colin Crouch 1
- Andrew Platt Silman's Complete Endgame Course From Beginner To Master by IM Jeremy Silman 1
- Brian Rountree
- Comprehensive Chess Endings: Bishop Against Knight Endings, Rook Against Minor Piece Endings, Volume 2 by Y Averbakh 1
- Comprehensive Chess Endings: Bishop Endings, Knight Endings, Volume 1 by Y Averbakh & V Checkover 1
- Comprehensive Chess Endings: Queen and Pawn Endings, Queen Against Rook Endings, Queen Against Minor Piece Endings, Volume 3 by Y Averbakh, V Henkin, & V Chekhover 1
- Comprehensive Chess Endings: Rook Endings, Volume 5 by Y Averbakh & N Kopayev 1
- It's Your Move by R. Teschner & AJ Miles 1
- Paul Keres: The Quest for Perfection; Inspiration and Instruction for Chess Players Of All Levels by Paul Keres & John Nunn 1
- Chris Motley
- Secrets Of Chess Training by Mark Dvoretsky 1
- Technique For The Tournament Player by Mark Dvoretsky & Artur Yusupov 1
- The Ruy Lopez for the Tournament Player by Gary Lane 1
- Vishy Anand: World Chess Champion; Life And Games by Vishy Anand and John Nunn 1
- What It Takes To Become A Grandmaster by Andrew Soltis 1
- Danny Corrigan Basic Chess by David Levens 1
- Dean Brown
- Comprehensive Chess Endings: Pawn Endings Volume 4 by Y Averbakh & I Maizelis 1
- The Chess Struggle In Practice; Lessons From The Famous Zurich Candidates Tournament Of 1953 by David Bronstein 1
- Griffin Ewers
- Caro-Kann: Classical 4...Bf5 by Gary Kasparov & Aleksander Shakarov 1
- Starting Out: Slav and Semi-Slav by Glenn Flear 1
- Jonathan Reinhard Starting Out: The c3 Sicilian by John Emms 1
- Josh Bloomer
- Critical Moments In Chess by Paata Gaprindashvili 1
- The King; Chess Pieces by J.H. Donner 1
- Mike Smith
- The Reassess Your Chess Workbook: How To Master Chess Imbalances by IM Jeremy Silman 1
- The Scotch Game Explained by Gary Lane 1
- Ryan Thompson
- A Guide To Chess Improvement: The Best Of Novice Nook by Dan Heisman 1
- Basic Chess Openings by Gabor Kallai 1
- Chess Training by Nigel Povah 1
- Supreme King Endgame Strategy by MI Shereshevsky 1
- Tanya Prabhu
- Chess For Dummies by James Eade 1
- Winning Chess Tactics by GM Yasser Seirawan with Jeremy Silman 1
- Timothy Bell Official Rules Of Chess, 5th Edition 1
- Will Wolf
- Batsford Chess Openings 2 by Garry Kasparov and Raymond Keene 1
- Board (Green & White, tournament size) 1
- Inside Chess Openings by E Gunfeld and N Kalinichenko 1
- Set (8 white & 8 black plastic pieces) 1
- Study Chess With Tal by Mikhail Tal & Alexander Koblencs 1
- The King's Gambit by John Shaw 1
- The Making Of A Champion; Karpov's Strategic Wins 1; 1961-1985 by Tibor Karolyi 1
Grand Total 37
