The WRONG Checkers Strategies

[tgf]

I was close but no cigar on both problems!

--George Hay

http://poolcheckers.com/aurora/straight1.htm
You will need to reverse the board

[tgf]

I put some Pool ideas for you to use
http://poolcheckers.com/aurora/straight2.htm

[George Hay]

Hi Jake, thank you for the additional checker problems, good training for the mind! I really like the Aurora Borealis color scheme that you use! I am sure Liam and Bill are giving a sporting chance for someone to post his or her sight solving of your new problem! I gave it my best shot!

--George Hay

[tgf]

George, didnt you see my solurion?

[George Hay]

Jake, yes! I did see your solution, but I would have posted my own solution if I had sight solved it,
or what Willie Ryan called "solved without the slightest agitation of the pieces."

--George Hay

[tgf]

"solved without the slightest agitation of the pieces."

That is pure poetry, I simply use the term "counting" - the ability to move checkers in your head without moving them on the board.
That is where my advice "Count one move more than your opponent" come from.
Towards that goal I drill my students daily with puzzles on two WhatsApp groups, one in Jamaican checkers and my African students in Pool.
Since they only use phones (no PCs, no programs and no physical boards) I know they do the solving in their heads.

[tgf]

On Aurora.
It only has one html color setup, where kings are hard to see. I found a similar setup elsewhere.
I wrote mr. Svirin advising that in Straight checkers they customary set puzzles for white site and thus asked him to adjust his program. His reply was that in many years there was no complain. I urge everyone here to write him advicing on how to make his program straight-checkers friendly.

[tgf]

[Bill Salot]

Jake,
Your problems are good.
When are you going to enter one of your originals in a contest for the unofficial world problem composing championship?
Are you limited to giant strokes?

[tgf]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the compliment. I know that I am not a composer, I simply convert from Pool/Russian checkers when I see something suitable. Alex Moiseyev - he is a composer, World Vice-Champion and International Grandmaster in composition.

[champion374]

im glad to see alot more post lately on the chat room. things are picking up

[Bill Salot]

Jake,

If you convert a pool/Russian problem to a straight checkers problem, does the setting change, or does it work in either game without a setting change?

I agree Alex is an excellent problem composer in both games. But World Champion Composer in Straight Checkers, he is not. That is because he has never entered a straight checkers problem composing contest to earn the title. (Do you think he will take the challenge?)

[tgf]

Hi Bill,

Cannot speak for Alex, but remember how at the height of his quest for the Straight checkers crown he found an outlet to relax composing on the 10x10 board, where there was a very vocal and creative community. I recall worrying for him for 10x10 is a very different game than Straight checkers and the way Alex jumped in it seemed that it took much more effort than just to relax. But he proved he could do both, winning the title and defending it for many years while also actively engaged on a different mental battlefront finally winning a second place in the world composition championship. If he is not composing in Straight is probably that so few are engaged in that, besides you no one say a word on this forum for example, Alex likes (I think) be engaged in arguments and conversations, but you guys do not engage much.

As far as my conversions. Yes, I do make changes, I try to bring the ideas from one game into another, it is not a 1:1 setup.
For example this was the original Pool position but it did not work in Straight but I managed to recreate the idea to suspend a checker in the middle of the board in a very different setup.
_

[tgf]

Very strange that this board is set up to disallow the poster delete his own post!