Wiswell-Hopper Game Anticipated!

[Richard Pask]

Canadian Checker Player V2 No 10 Oct 1908 P208

Problem #52 By E H Taylor
Black: 2,7; King on 31
White: 5,9; King on 25
Black to move and win

7-10 5-1; 10-14 1-6 and now into the Wiswell-Hopper game of 1951.

Of course, this is no way detracts from Wiswell's win, but of interest nonetheless.

[George Hay]

Richard Pask, nice catch! The White Piece on 25 is a Man (not a King) and the page number is 203 (the "three" looks like an "eight"). The solution to Problem 52 appears on page 229. Tom Wiswell beat Millard Hopper in Game 14 of the GAYP World Championship Match with a cool, calm, and collected end game many years later in 1951.

BLACK TO MOVE AND WIN




The Online Checkers Library has the Canadian Checker Player, Volume 2

http://checkersusa.com/books/straight/T ... I_1908.pdf

and Checker Kings In Action (Wiswell vs Hopper).

http://checkersusa.com/books/straight/W ... n_1952.pdf

Thanx for sharing this checkers insight with us!

--George Hay

[George Hay]

The instructive Game 14 Wiswell vs Hopper 1951 is featured in the booklet How To Play Checkers by Richard Pask. This is part of the Parragon Checkers Box Set that fills a much needed market niche of a checkers set with an instruction guide.

http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Checkers ... n+checkers

[Richard Pask]

Correct on both points George: I must have been asleep!

[Bill Salot]

Hold on, fellows, you and E. H. Taylor shortchanged G. H. Slocum.

Even when the Canadian Checker Player republished the diagrammed problem in the January 1910 issue, Volume 4, No.1, Page 21, Second Problem, it credited Slocum instead of Taylor; where Ivan Powers, Natchez, Mississippi, said, “We have again the touch of the master hand”.

It was first published in the April 1897, American Checker Review, Volume VI, No. 8, Page 8, Problem 4, one of four that Slocum “composed for John T. Denvir’s Lessons”.

It subsequently appeared overseas in the September 1897, Draughts Players Quarterly Review, Volume 5, No. 3, Prob. 66, and the March 26, 1898, Queenslander, Problem 615, both credited to Slocum, well before E. H. Taylor (1908), and six more times before Wiswell-Hopper (1951).

But only the first 13 moves are original with Slocum. After that the solution belongs to James Wyllie, Dundee Weekly News, February 18, 1865, up to the block finale by Sturges, 1800.

It is all detailed in "SLOCUM STROKES", Problem 79, except for your E. H. Taylor reference. Thanks for finding it!

[George Hay]

Bill, thank you! New readers to this forum may find Slocum Strokes at this link from OMOCH:

http://www.online-museum-of-checkers-hi ... /id71.html