Jim Wickersty - June 2026
Jim has been playing chess since he was a teenager, starting around 1963 when he was about 15. He learned from a friend’s father. His connection to the Woodbury chess scene goes back to the early 1970s. In fact, his first taste of formal competition was with the Woodbury Chess Club. He later took a hiatus from the club and eventually came back.
Starting Out
“Since I was a teenager,” he said when asked how long he had been playing. “I would say when I was about 15 ... we were talking like 1963.” He learned from “my friend Tommy’s father” and still laughs about one early prank. He and a friend wrote down their own moves and tried to pass the game off as one by Bobby Fischer. Tommy’s father took one look and shut it down: “This doesn’t look like Bobby Fischer.” Originally from North Jersey, Jim moved south around 1970 or 1971 while teaching in Deptford. Not long after, he found the Woodbury chess club and started coming by, estimating it was around 1972. Most of what he played then was skittles, but he did get one early taste of competition when he subbed in for a missing Woodbury player in a match against Avalon. Unfortunately, he lost, and with it the team match. “If I had won, we would have won,” he said.
Why He Keeps Coming Back to Chess
What keeps bringing him back is tied to who he is. “I guess, I think it’s my personality. I like to do a lot of solitary things. And I like to do thoughtful kinds of things.” At the same time, Jim said he has tried over the years to be more social. During a break from chess, a friend told him, “I know you’re interested in chess and you stay to yourself too much. So go back and play chess.” Jim saw the humor in that logic right away and responded: “So what you’re recommending is I go back to socialize with opposing guys that aren’t allowed to talk,” he recalled with a smile.
Players He Admired
Jim said he used to follow top-level chess more closely than he does now and admired Bobby Fischer. But the player he spoke about most warmly was George Chavanne, whom he knew from All the Kings Men. Chavanne loved rapid and blitz, searched for unusual openings, and liked putting opponents in unfamiliar spots. Jim especially liked the way Chavanne would play with move orders and come up with ideas on his own, looking at a familiar opening and asking what would happen if he got there a different way, or beat the other player to a key square first. That independence was what stood out to Jim. “I thought that was the coolest thing,” he said. “So I admired him for that.”
Remembering the Club of the Early 70s
Asked what he remembered about the club in the 1970s, Jim mentioned Herb, who ran it at the time. But the deeper memory was that many of the young players there moved really fast. At first this unnerved him, but eventually he learned: “that doesn't mean anything. They're just playing fast. I'm going to take my time and beat them.” Jim was not going to let them dictate the pace of play.
Life Beyond the Board
Outside chess, Jim has built a full life around home and community. He lives at Silver Lake, where he is active in the neighborhood and spends time on the water in the summer. “Everybody has boats,” he said, adding that about half the residents have pontoon boats, which he described as “like a board with a motor on it and you’re riding around.” He swims in the lake, has ice skated on it, and enjoys vegetable gardening. “I grow most of them from seeds,” he said, casually demystifying the process: “All you do is put the seed in and a plant comes out eventually.” He also described freezing tomatoes for sauce in winter, so that in February, he said, he can make tomato sauce that “tastes just like it came out of the garden.” That same self-reliance shows up elsewhere too. Jim heats his house mostly with firewood and said he is “always hustling up oak and maple and cherry and stuff.” He retired after a career in education that included Camden County Tech and two final years as principal of a small private school for children with cerebral palsy in Pennsauken. “I did that for my final two years and had a ball doing that,” he said. And if anyone thinks retirement means extra free time, Jim would disagree: “You wonder how you had time to go to work because there’s so much stuff to do.”
The club is fortunate to have Jim as a regular member.
Jim goes over some of the moves from his final-round game in the 2026 Woodbury Chess Club Championship shortly after its conclusion:
