Magazines

This collection, which started with just the most recent issues of NZ Chess has now grown to include almost all chess magazines that have been published in New Zealand.

The most recent and longest lasting national chess magazine has been New Zealand Chess which began publication in 1973 but sadly ceased publication in 2018. The initial issues in 1973 were known as the NZCA Bulletin.

The collection also notably now includes all but one issue of The NZ Chessplayer and all issues of The NZ Chess Gazette. Both of these older magazines featured remarkably good production values, and the former had a decent twelve year run.

All issues of NZ Chess News, produced by Ted Frost for approximately three years from 1958-1961 are now available as well. Remarkably, for a while this magazine overlapped with The NZ Chessplayer and New Zealand had two chess magazines running simultaneously. Update July 2023: The NZ Chess News page now also includes many issues of a successor magazine produced by Zig Frankel, running for two years from December 1962.

The Monagraphs and More section includes some magazine like material, including a remarkably mature small book written by future GM Murray Chandler when he was only sixteen years old. There's also an actual magazine, the NZ Chess Chronicle this time, published for only a short time in the late 1880s, but again featuring remarkably high production values.

Many thanks are due to the late Hilton Bennett, who owns or could otherwise track down most of the material, to Michael Freeman for funding and particularly to Philip Hair for the physical hard work of doing all the scanning.

Please note the interactive section, featuring for the moment at least just a tiny subset of the material in a convenient interactive format and the Bulletins, an attempt at creating an interactive chess magazine to replace NZ Chess. It's still finding its legs.

Since late January 2022 the web game playthroughs that were maintained for the magazine from 2008-2018 have also been available right here on this site in menu item Games 2008-2018.

Finally the reader is referred to Murray Chandler's Listener columns, also now preserved here, hopefully forever.