Bill Wall

William "Bill" Dale Wall (born May 11, 1951 in Raymond, Washington) is an American chess player, author and journalist.
He is a retired Air Force officer, former Division Chief at the Air Force Information Warfare Center, and former NASA engineer.
Biography
He played his first major chess tournament, the 5th American Open in Santa Monica, in November 1969.
In September 1970 Wall joined the U.S. Air Force and the next year he was assigned to Beale AFB in Marysville, California, where he was a crew chief on KC-135Q tankers,. He organized a chess club there and wrote a chess column for the base paper for three years. He also played for an Air Force team called The Flying Knights and played in several Air Force Championships.
In December 1971 he was assigned to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, where his job was the aerial refueling of B-52 and SR-71 aircraft. When off-duty he played a lot of chess at the Naha USO chess club. While on leave, on June 30-July 4, 1973 he played in the first World Open, held at the McAlpin Hotel in New York. Wall scored 5-3 in his 8-rounds section. Upon returning to Beale AFB, he became a certified tournament director and directed dozens of chess tournaments.
In 1974 he was assigned for 5 months at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. In August 1974 he was inducted in the USO Hall of Fame for his chess activities overseas. In February 1976 he won the Wilkes County chess championship. In September 1978 he became president of the North Carolina Chess Association. He is a past Secretary of the Chess Journalists of America and a past vice-chairman of the Southern Chess Administration, serving as a delegate in the US Chess Federation from 1977 to 1983.
In March 1980 Wall was editor of the Dayton Chess Club Review and Vice President of the Dayton Chess Club in Dayton, Ohio. In September of the same year he was elected president of the Ohio Chess Association. In April 1982 he co-edited the Ohio Chess Bulletin and wrote his first book, 300 King's Gambit Miniatures, published by Chess Enterprises, Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.
He is a contributor of ChessGames.com, of Black & White, a chess magazine in India, and of over 100 chess e-books for Gambitchess.com. He has written over 700 articles on chess and 32 chess books. He was a regular columnist for chessville.com.

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