Fox Cities Chess

Fox Cities Chess Club gets new life with weekly gatherings, tournament
By Kara Patterson • Post-Crescent staff writer • January 20, 2009

In his backpack Ryan Baewer almost always carries a chess board.

Baewer of Kaukauna has spent much of his free time over the past two years in coffeehouses and other public gathering places across the Fox Valley, challenging passersby right then and there to a friendly game.

“I’m pretty sure in the downtown (Appleton) area I’m known as ‘the chess guy,'” said Baewer, 27, who founded the Fox Cities Chess Club in 2007. “You were by yourself, I’d approach you and be like, ‘Excuse me, but do you play chess?’ I did that to hundreds of people. So many people started getting together we decided to make the club.”

The Fox Cities Chess Club first met at Harmony Cafe in downtown Appleton, where Baewer often organized informal chess games. The club took a break in July and then resumed its weekly-or-so meetings in November at Generations Coffee House in downtown Neenah.

On a recent Saturday at Generations, Baewer played Lukas Kozminski, 12, a sixth-grader at Kaleidoscope Academy, a charter school within Roosevelt Middle School in Appleton.

The two pondered possible moves at a small, wall-side table. Above them hung a work of art in which a woman mirrored a common chess player pose — head resting in one hand, perhaps in concentration or in anticipation of a long game.

“For me it’s not just a board game,” said Lukas, who started playing chess with his stepfather every night before bedtime at the age of 5 or 6. “Board games you just play 10 times, and it goes in your basement. (Chess) helps you with your math a lot; it’s logical and strategical. It’s very interesting, and it gives your brain exercise.”

The Fox Cities Chess Club has 75 regular players who come and go during Saturday meetings — about 20 percent are youth — and at least 45 registered members. It’s the public resurgence of an activity that drew a steady group for decades to a now-defunct club in Appleton.

Mike Selig, the director for the upcoming 45th annual Northeastern Open Chess Championship at the Holiday Inn Neenah Riverwalk, served for several decades as director of the Appleton Chess Club, which started in 1965.

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