Craig Stauffer does not care a lick about chess.

At least that’s what he’d like people to believe.

But for anyone who knows Stauffer, for anyone who’s ever stepped foot in his home situated a few quiet blocks away from Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, this statement is patently false. After all, chess and jazz and cigars and even fine wines (and all of their respective trappings) are ubiquitous in his home. A few of his favorite albums are artfully displayed on his living room walls, while others are meticulously stored away in a nearby closet. Old, ornate, and now-empty cigar boxes appear sporadically on shelves, coffee tables, countertops. Cigar rings, slid from the ends of his favorite stogies, are tastefully pinned and framed in his dining room, reminiscent of a lepidopterist’s method of displaying moths or butterflies within glass frames. A couple bottles of upscale wine sit on his dining room table, at the ready, in the event of dinner guests or an unexpected visit from a friend. Chess posters advertising the greatest matches and players in history adorn his walls. His upstairs—where rows of tables and chairs sit covered in cloth chessboards and timers—is devoted solely to teaching Wabash Valley youngsters.

It is here where Craig Stauffer’s professed disinterest in chess becomes an obvious farce. Just another one of his playful games. To watch him interact with children, to watch him instill his passion for the “thinking person’s game,” as it has been called, is to see a man with immense talent. A genuine gift. And a rare gift found in our humble little town, at that. But one, I would argue, Terre Haute should be proud to claim. Most weekends, Valley children can be seen bounding up his steps, flinging themselves on his couches and chairs, vying for his attention as they try to explain their latest academic, artistic, and athletic accomplishments. Stauffer smiles, the confident and patient smirk of a man who understands this bottomless well of youthful energy and knows that in a few minutes he will craftily harness and redirect this same excitement into the game he has devoted a significant portion of his life to playing and teaching.

But for now, for these few moments, he revels in the children’s cheery mood. It is his little offering to them, and their little offering to him, this bounding around the room and telling stories and shouting that they do. It invigorates him. This is apparent by merely looking at his eyes, which, always bright and mischievous, take on even more life. They sparkle and dart about the room, making sure no one gets into trouble, that all children are present, that they are getting along and no one is being ignored. Somehow he takes it all in. It becomes obvious that this activity, these children moving here and there, is reminiscent of a chess game. And he is watching and recording every move made.

Craig Stauffer is in control.
I know all of this because Stauffer was kind enough to invite me over to observe a couple of teaching sessions with his “kids,” as he likes to call them. He also likes to point out that these students, ranging from ages 7 to 12 on this particular day, will likely “take over the world” sometime in the not-too-distant future. And it is hard not to agree with him. Every one of them has a distinct personality. There is the one with the confident gaze, who sits back quietly taking in all the details, the actions of her peers. There is the one chewing on a candy eyeball he got from school earlier in the day, the jokester always armed with a one-liner and looking for an opening to deliver it. There is the one with the vocabulary and poise of someone twice his age. There is the one whose smile mirrors that of his brother precisely. There is the one who knows the answer to every question Stauffer poses, and the one who pretends not to know. Some are demure. Some are rambunctious. Some are inquisitive. Some are confident. They represent the wide spectrum of children in Terre Haute: home- and publicly schooled, children whose parents work a wide variety of professions, an assortment of ethnic backgrounds and ages, boys and girls. Nearly every category of child who lives in Vigo County. Amazingly, in his or her own way, every single one of them shares a passion for chess. And the thing is, they are good. This much becomes obvious long before today’s lesson will end.

Now I have the pleasure of knowing quite a few teachers. I know public school teachers of all grades and subjects. I know college professors and private tutors. I know daycare workers and after-school coaches. Librarians and community center volunteers. And all of us do our jobs well. Still, occasionally I come across someone with a natural talent for passing knowledge on to other people, a talent so intense that it is almost imperceptible. Craig Stauffer is one of these gifted people. 

Here is what he was up against that rainy evening when I accepted his invitation for a classroom visit: a furious downpour, kids bristling with post-school excitement, and the looming promise of Halloween trick-or-treating a few hours away, evidenced by the one or two students who came in costume and even the one parent who arrives after work to pick up his child, dressed like a punk rocker. It would be an understatement to say Stauffer has his work cut out for him.

But an outside observer would never guess this by his demeanor. He gives the children time to expend some of their energy, introducing them to me one at a time and enquiring about each one’s day at school, potential Halloween activities, even making himself the butt of a handful of jokes. Then deftly, like a magician distracting his audience with something flashy, before the kids know it they are seated calmly around a table, poring over problem sheets with half-played chess matches illustrated in miniature. The Italian Game. The Center Fork Trick. The nail-painting-and-wall approach, which is a beginner’s pinning tactic. Pencil to paper they systematically attack each problem while Stauffer looks on, nudging those who need a little jogging of the memory, affirming their answers once they figure out the best solution. Here, an exclamation by a child who suddenly remembers a strategy learned previously that applies to the situation. There, a scrunched brow from a child who almost has it. So close. Then the unclenching of concentrating eyebrows when he sees the solution, when it suddenly appears, like a weird premonition. And so the class goes. The minutes rush by. Even I am learning.

Stauffer is that contagious.
In fact, the man simply oozes chess. As I watch him manipulating the children into learning more than I am sure they intended to learn, it suddenly occurs to me that I have never seen Craig Stauffer play a game of chess. Not one. And I have known him for several years. This strikes me as odd.

Then I have an epiphany. I am dead wrong. Stauffer plays chess all the time. He plays it vicariously through his students, who, incidentally, regularly win regional and state championships, and even a national title. He plays it when he recounts a famous game to his students, a game whose every move he has committed to memory and reenacts on a giant chessboard hanging on the wall. He plays it when he accompanies them to a tournament and watches all of his hard work in action. It is a larger chess game he is playing, and all of his students over the years have been his pieces. He trains them to think critically, to outsmart their opponents, to simply be patient and wait for the other player to make a mistake. This is the key. This is the main point he drives home more than all the others. A great chess player waits out his opponent. She knows one of them will make an errant move. It is just a matter of not being the person to make the first mistake, and taking advantage as soon as the other player does. Chess is patience. It is really that simple.

Before I know it, the lesson has ended. One group shuffles out, joking and laughing and reinvigorated by the afternoon’s lesson. The next group appears. The game resumes.

When his students are not around Craig Stauffer carries himself in surprisingly similar fashion. At 43, he is just as scrappy and vibrant as he was when he first arrived in Terre Haute back in 1993. He bristles with energy, but he has learned to contain it. He owns it. Once again, it is about patience, and Stauffer is one of the most patient men I know. But in the moments when he does decide to unleash his pent-up energy, it is always surprising to see the outcome. Perhaps he embarks on a marathon reorganization of his many hundreds of primarily jazz vinyl recordings: ranking them on a five-star scale, cutting and pasting a small blurb to each album cover, re-alphabetizing them. Perhaps he decides to take on a few buddies for an all-night contest of darts at some local dive bar: complaining about his sore arm, his lack of aim, but nailing triple after triple until everyone rolls his eyes and realizes Stauffer’s up to his old shenanigans. Perhaps he decides to tweak his already impressive sound system: a hodgepodge of audio scraps whose sum is far more eloquent than a list of its parts might suggest. Perhaps he invites a couple buddies over for a cookout, which quickly becomes an all-out jazz, wine, and steak-fest. No matter what the outcome, when Stauffer lets out his pent-up energy, things get done.

To hear Stauffer recount his history with chess is an exhausting affair, but his listeners inevitably realize it makes perfect sense. It is a series of events wherein he was in the right place at the right time. And his history is the byproduct of his relentless passion for the game and his boundless well of energy. How else would he have gotten to where he is, a ranked USCF Life Master (having played well over 200 games without ever dipping below Master level) who teaches in our local schools and who has taught at institutions as prestigious as Latin School in Chicago? He tells of trips around the world, many chess-related, some to visit chess-related friends. In fact, there are very few countries where he would not know someone who might let him crash on his couch, if need be. He tells of breathtaking matches played and witnessed, and he tells them with such intensity—his arms slicing the air, perhaps a cigar used to punctuate certain points in the story—it almost seems as though he is describing something else. Some other exciting activity maybe, such as a bullfight, or an Ultimate Fighting Championship match. Because surely chess cannot be this interesting. Surely I have missed something? But no, as I piece it all together, as I realize Stauffer might very well be unable to survive without chess, it all makes sense. Of course he did those things. Of course he knows these people. Of course he ended up in Terre Haute after a series of jobs brought him here to teach chess camps and ended with him making our city his home. He has stayed and set up shop, and our city is that much better for it.

Stauffer has no shortage of chess-related anecdotes, which sometimes make the chess world seem as though it is as scandalous as the notorious backstage parties of Eighties hair bands. In fact, his personal chess story is a whirlwind of anecdotes, and I would be remiss to not mention my favorite. This is the one about how he attended the World Championship Chess Tournament in New York City using a press pass someone gifted to him, which is not at all surprising because that is just how things go with Stauffer. Good things always happen to him, whether it is lucking into a hard-to-find jazz album worth hundreds of dollars for a buck, or maybe even getting an all-expenses paid trip to Chicago to witness the greatest players in the nation and the world battle it out.

At the 1990 World Championship in New York, Stauffer arrives, a 24-year-old unknown still wet behind the ears. Since no one knows him, he is basically ignored. After all, the big buzz is that world-renowned chess Grand Master, Mikhail Tal, is in town to observe the tournament. Why the big deal? Tal is widely revered as one of the greatest players of all time. He even beat chess god Bobby Fischer 4 – 0 the first time the men ever met. This is only the second time Tal has stepped foot on American soil, since he was not allowed to leave the USSR to play chess in America until after the Iron Curtain collapsed. He died shortly after this appearance, which, in retrospect, makes this occasion that much more special. So his being here is a big deal. A massive deal, really, and it is only natural that Stauffer be ignored. And yet, unbeknownst to the many Tal groupies awaiting his arrival, Stauffer has already met Mikhail Tal. Remember, these things just happen to Stauffer. The stars are always aligning for him. The story goes that back in Chicago, a couple years earlier, Tal was playing at the National Open, and he stumbled across Stauffer and a couple attractive women in a hot tub, celebrating some chess-related occasion or another. Turns out Tal found most chess players to be dull, but here was someone after his own heart. Besides, Tal also loved to knock back a few drinks and cavort with women. The setup was perfect. And so the men became friends. Two like-minded individuals. It is probably safe to assume the night involved cigars. And also some jazz. Maybe even some chess.

Back in New York, the chess crowd is ablaze with excitement. Tal has been sighted. They cannot believe he is actually here among them. A god among mortals. So when Tal walks through the door and a buzz makes its way through the crowd and people are poking one another and gaping and snapping photos, what does Tal do? Why he makes a beeline for Stauffer of course—because these things just happen to Craig—and the two men catch up while Tal ignores his adoring fans who are practically exploding with frustration. He is so close. Within touching distance. But he is also half a world away, reminiscing with Stauffer about sharing drinks in Chicago.



So it all makes sense. The love of the game. The mischievous grin. The energy and the joy. The natural inclination for teaching. The countless moments of good fortune. It all comes together for me as I walk out Craig Stauffer’s front door and into the torrential downpour on Halloween eve: Craig Stauffer is a lucky man. He is a patient man. He is a playful and caring and wise man.

But more than anything, he is a chess man. And I doubt he would have it any other way.

Other articles by Aaron Michael Morales

• Claudia of Note - March 1st, 2010
• Child's Play - November 1st, 2009