Walter Shawn Browne was an Australian-born American chess and poker player. Awarded the title Grandmaster by FIDE in 1970, he won the U.S. Chess Championship six times. Browne was known to sell interesting chess related items at tournaments where he played, such as the National Open, to earn extra money. Many of these items were sourced from different parts of the world during his chess travels and were unique.
Early years
Browne was born to an American father and an Australian mother in Sydney. His family moved to the New York area when he was age 3. Browne moved to California in 1973. Browne won the U.S. Junior Championship in 1966. Browne had dual Australian and American citizenship until he was 21, and represented Australia for a short time. He won the 1969 Australian Chess Championship. He tied first with Renato Naranja while representing Australia at the 1969 Asian Zonal tournament in Singapore, earning the International Master title, though Naranja qualified for the 1970 Interzonal on tie breaks. His zonal result earned him an invitation to an international grandmaster tournament in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, he gained the Grandmaster title by tying for 2nd–4th places, with Bruno Parma and Arthur Bisguier, behind reigning world championBoris Spassky. Browne played for Australia at the 1970 and 1972 Chess Olympiads, before switching to representing the United States in 1974.
U.S. championships
He won the U.S. Chess Championship six times. His victories were at Chicago 1974 with 9½/13, Oberlin 1975 with 8½/13, Mentor 1977 with 9/13, Greenville 1980 with 7½/12, South Bend 1981 with 9/14, and 1983 with 9/13. Of these six titles, three were shared, with three-way ties in 1980 and 1983, and a two-way split in 1981. His six titles have been exceeded only by the eight titles of Bobby Fischer, all won outright by at least a point, and Samuel Reshevsky.
Browne generally performed well at the Chess Olympiad in his six appearances. He represented Australia twice and the United States four times, winning a total of five medals, all bronze. He scored 55½/86 points, for 64.5 percent. His detailed results, from olimpbase.org, follow.
Skopje 1972, Australia board 1, 17½/22, board bronze;
Nice 1974, United States board 3, 10½/17, team bronze;
Buenos Aires 1978, United States board 2, 4½/9, team bronze;
Lucerne 1982, United States board 1, 5½/10, team bronze;
Thessaloniki 1984, United States board 4, 3½/9, team bronze.
Other results
Browne was a dominant presence in American chess in the 1970s and 1980s. Aside from his U.S. Championship wins, he also won the National Open eleven times, the American Open seven times, the World Open three times, and the U.S. Open Chess Championship twice. Browne also enjoyed many international successes from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s. His international firsts include Venice 1971, Wijk aan Zee 1974, Winnipeg 1974, Lone Pine 1974, Mannheim 1975, Reykjavík 1978, Wijk aan Zee 1980, Chile 1981, Indonesia 1982, the 1983 New York Open, Gjovik 1983, and Naestved 1985. However, after dominating the U.S. Championship for a decade, Browne was unable to approach the same level in that event after 1983. In U.S. Championships, he scored just 7½/17 in 1984, 6½/13 in 1985, 6/15 in 1986, 6/13 in 1987, and 6/15 in 1989. He won the 1991 Canadian Open Chess Championship.
Later life
Browne was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2003. He won the U.S. Senior Open in June 2005. In 2012 he published an autobiography and collection of his best games, The Stress of Chess... and its Infinite Finesse. In December 2014, he won the Pan-American Senior Championship in the 65+ age category, held in São Paulo, Brazil. On 22 June 2015, Browne played in the 50th Anniversary National Open Chess Championship at the Westgate Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. He tied for 9th-15th. At the 2015 Las Vegas International Chess Festival, Browne also gave a 25-board simultaneous exhibition, a lecture series, and taught a chess camp. That same weekend, Browne took byes in the National Open so he could play in the 2015 Senior Event at the World Series of Poker. He played well, but did not win money. After a week of chess and poker, Browne stayed at the home of a lifelong friend in Las Vegas, and died in his sleep on 24 June 2015. He was 66. He was survived by his wife of 42 years, Dr Raquel Browne, a clinical psychologist, their three sons, and eight grandchildren.
Playing style
Browne tended to spend a lot of his allotted time during the opening moves and early middlegame; consequently he often wound up in. This sometimes led to mistakes, even though Browne played reasonably well in time trouble; and good play during this phase could unsettle his opponents. A world-class speed chess player, Browne in 1988 formed the World Blitz Chess Association, but it ended in 2004 after encountering financial troubles.
Notable games
One of Browne's best games, a coruscating against International Master Bernard Zuckerman:
Another brilliant win, this one against grandmaster Larry Christiansen:
Poker
Browne was a professional poker player since the early 1970s. In 2007, he was runner up in the $2500 HORSE event of the World Series of Poker. Browne cashed in live events for $269,203.
