Biographical research courtesy of <The Focus>

From the Mechanics' Institute Newsletter #473, 12/16/2009:

"William (Bill) Cutler Haines, one of the pioneers of electronic chess databases, died in early December in Vallejo where he had been living for many years.

Most Bay Area players first got to know Bill in the 1980s, but he actually got his start at the Sacramento Chess Club in 1955. Two years after joining he played his first USCF rated tournament in the auditorium of the Spreckles-Russell Dairy Company located at 1717 Mission Street in San Francisco. Winning his first three games gave Bill the honor of playing 14-year-old Bobby Fischer who would win the event with a score of 8.5-.5, drawing only with second place finisher Gil Ramirez. Bill finished the event with a fifty percent score against strong opposition to earn an initial rating of 1950. He soon made it over 2000 and became an Expert. Haines was rated in the 2100s for much of his career but never quite earned the Master's title.

Bill left California for Missouri sometime in the mid to late 1960s and appears to have spent the next twenty years of his life there. Former USCF Executive Director Al Lawrence and International Master Elliott Winslow remember Bill from his days in Kansas City where he had an ongoing rivalry with fellow Expert Jack Winters, proprietor of the Chess House. The two players had a clash of styles with Haines always preferring positional play and Winters the role of the attacker.

Before he devoted himself to Chess Database work Bill Haines was a professional studio photographer. He once told IM Winslow that his two most famous clients were the Hearst family and Barbi Klein. The latter was a teen department store model in Sacramento when he photographed her. Later, under the name Barbi Benton, she became better known as a Playboy's Playmate of the Month and the girlfriend of Hugh Hefner.

A friendly and witty man, standing 6 feet tall and weighing over 350 pounds most of his life, Bill Haines was a colorful character who would often arrive at tournaments on his motorcycle. More than once he brought his bulldog to spectate at the People's Open in Berkeley.

Eric Schiller writes about his good friend: <His legacy is the many bulletins he did enriching our databases. A friend who was always offering to help, but whose physical ailments limited his work, which wasn't properly appreciated or rewarded>."