Weak Position with a Strong Move for Checkers

[Eric Strange]

There is this stink on the game of checkers where everyone in society views it as being a simple kids game. That being said most players with the sort of passion for games of this sort jump to chess right off the bat. Although this is very weak position for the game of checkers it does allow for some type of comeback to happen with the right pieces in place.

The first time I got the internet and went to Yahoo! Games I surveyed the types of games I could play before I went out with my friends to get into trouble. I just wanted to play a quick easy game where I could kick everyone's butt and carry my head a little higher for the day. I saw checkers and instantly had a flash back to probably 2nd or 3rd grade where I played checkers in the classroom (with no real rules, just moving pieces and trying to obtain kings) and had a very easy time beating my peers. Without a second thought I jumped into the game and realized... I HAVE TO JUMP????? ....HOW IS THIS CHECKERS.... Yahoo! has it all wrong. I played quite a few games that day. I was caught in 2 for 1's and learned, caught in endgame traps and learned, and got completely demolished by great players who would play anyone and made me want to get as good as them.

I happen to fall into checkers by accident but the same type of negative thought about the game of checkers might not be so negative as it was productive in my case. The easiest way to attract a lot of people for the challenge of checkers would be $$ because who's gonna turn down a few grand when they think the games so easy (but we all know this is wishful thinking). The youth tournament failed because the word did not get out to a very large range of people.... you attracted people who play checkers anyways and thought they could come win. With large money for tournament prizes you need large money in advertising. and I think that's where we are lacking. If you get 3 times as many players by hardcore advertisement then the prize money will automatically fall in line with that. We need a way to challenge the world to checkers, but first lets start with locally. if your hosting a tournament why not get a radio ad, post on Craigslist, newspaper, flyers, and even try to limit youth to 1 day because we all know little kids parents aren't gonna want to dedicate 3 days to their kid playing checkers. Although little kids aren't a huge deal right now they will become the future. Hand them welcome packets with information and encourage them to play online. This will bring online checkers back as well as keep the kid learning the game and hold the games interest in their mind so they will continue to come to live tournaments. I know that there are people who do promoting for a living and some cost a lot less than you think!!!! ask them for a flat rate to promote and find sponsors for a couple weeks leading up to a tournament. It's hard to find someone to sponsor something like checkers as a whole. But why not find sponsors for single tournaments... promoters are VERY good at things like that. maybe try to get donations for that instead of donations directly to the tournament.

These are just a few ideas going through my head that could be fairly inexpensive. when my site is up in the next few months I will be doing 24/7 advertising in all major online checkers websites trying to attract players to kurnik so they can learn 3-move and also to ACF. My site currently has over 100,000 games in a database, categorized, and they play out on an animated board so that you can study in real time instead of with numbers. This should help to peak many players interest in order to get them more serious into our game. It has been a while since I posted something so I figured I would be long winded with my ideas and I would like it if everyone would post their ideas here also. Lets try to stay away from negativity here. Only productive ideas.... but that does not mean you cannot voice concern over certain ideas... just make it productive.

Thank you,

-Eric Strange

[Eric Strange]

Is my post too long??? that why I get no responses haha

[JR Smith]

Some good ideas and I’m glad you are thinking about how to help promote this great game. That's what it’s going to take, and implement these ideas. Some will produce more than others and this means keeping the hopper full of fresh ideas, and maintaining a continuous effort. We appreciate you and your goals, and hopefully we will learn from each other and work together on building checkers.

[BillyBoy]

Hi Eric, I totally agree with you the youth tournament has had some huge prize funds. And the idea was to attract more youth players. It makes perfect sense but yet it was not really advertised properly. Its kinda funny how basic it sounds but yet at the time was not followed through. I think these high prize fund tournaments will be alot bigger if you took half that prize fund money and put it to advertising. Yahoo, Pogo really any game playing website its worth putting into having advertisements of big tournaments on those sites specially youth with the high prize funds. Sure your basic regular players know how to look up tournaments but not all your checker players. So this is my logic. Billy

[Eric Strange]

Yes, and not even already established checkers players because a lot of them understand they are not good enough to win yet. But trying to get brand new players locally who think of the game as simple. Out of 20 players that show there is a good chance that one of them get hooked to the game. If that happens at every tournament and those 2 players practice locally with players they met at the tournament and are given a welcome packet with kurnik.org so they can improve their game with some of the best online then slowly our game as a whole will grow and lost players may even come back.

On a side note if anyone knows anyone (old enough to learn and remember positions and solutions). I would be more than happy to teach people online and go over positions.

[Pedro Saavedra]

I don't get it. If checkers were so easy, it would be just as easy for my opponents as for myself. When I started playing checkers I did feel that my years being used to analysis in chess might transfer some skills that would give me an edge over new checker players, but not over experienced ones.

Cash prices are reasonable to attract masters to tournaments. I do not think they are practical with the new players. You want to attract players who will fall in love with the game, not those who will see it only as an extra source of income. This is not to say that those players who invest a goodly amount of time on the game and provide us with games and analysis that enhance our own enjoyment should not be remunerated. That is what prices for top positions in masters' sections are for.

Get the winner a trophy and his picture in the paper. Get every plus score a book. That seems to me more sensible.

[Eric Strange]

Yeah because poker attracted all of its new players by saying "Your gonna fall in love with this game"

The hard thing is to get people to give checkers a chance and allow them to fall in love with the game.... The way to do that is by attracting them with things that people like... MONEY!!! 95% of the great online players that have never been to a tournament say.... I'd go to a tournament if it offered good $$. in order to get good money at every tournament we need to get new players.... understand now?

[Dennis Cayton]

95% of the "great online players" also think the ACF is composed of "geriatrics" who are worthless because they can't play 1/0. As long as that impression remains (and I've never seen you do anything to dispel it, Eric) we won't get anywhere meaningful with youth.

Hi John,

Can you please explain to this "geriatric" what "1/0" means?

Is it just a short-hand code for "real time" online play?

Or does it refer to online play with a certain time limit involved?

Not knowing stuff like this, I feel like an old washed up dinosaur.

Thanks!

Best Wishes,

Dennis Cayton

[jaguar72]

Dennis, 1/0 means a one-minute game with zero increment: each player has a total of one minute to play the entire game, which means that the "winner" is usually the one who can move the fastest. It's extremely common online, and I'd say that at least 30% of these games end in a victory on time rather than on positional or material strength.

Many thanks for the clarification, John.

I'm sure there are a lot of other pleasures in life we can perform in a minute also (no doubt all of us can think of several...), but what's the point?

Quo, quo, scelesti ruitis, eh?

Geriatric and Proud of It, V/R,

Gary Jenkins/jaguar72

[Dennis Cayton]

Dennis, 1/0 means a one-minute game with zero increment: each player has a total of one minute to play the entire game, which means that the "winner" is usually the one who can move the fastest. It's extremely common online, and I'd say that at least 30% of these games end in a victory on time rather than on positional or material strength.

Hello John,

Yikes!

Thank you very much for the explanation.

I figured it might be some sort of "fast" game but not THAT fast.

Maybe it's the generation gap, but this type of game has no appeal for me.

To me, not having the time to fully think through your moves takes away much of the pleasure of the game.

Thanks again!

Best Wishes,

Dennis

[Pedro Saavedra]

95% of the "great online players" also think the ACF is composed of "geriatrics" who are worthless because they can't play 1/0. As long as that impression remains (and I've never seen you do anything to dispel it, Eric) we won't get anywhere meaningful with youth.

This is where you mix live play with turn-based. Turn-based players are the modern day mail play. They take their time in each move and many, like myself would never play live. Turn-based play has attracted the likes of Dick Fortman, Mac Banks and many others whose aliases I have not discovered. And some, like me, are ACF members even though we do not play in tiurnaments, because we want to support good checkers that we can later read about.

I have a dozen reasons not to attend tournaments (some are health, some are family, some are work related, some are personal preferences) but I like going over the games. To me ACF speed is to fast -- I like a day or two to make my move.

My objection is to equating crossboard play with play in general. It is just one mode.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Pedro, several times on this forum I proposed and tried to encourage mail players to start playing 4-moves restriction games. This can bring a fresh blood to mail play and also greatly help to cross aboard players going over and exploring some weak 3-move lines.

Why not running a ladder on IYT with 4 moves restrictions and sanctioning this event by ACF as an official ACF Mail Play National ??? Would you be interesting to run such ladder ?

ACF is not an organisation from other planet, it's us You can start running ladders on IYT and I am sure - you will find a full suport from ACF and they may recognize new champions.

Winner of Mail National will have a rights to challenge Mac Banks for World Title if (s)he desires.

Simple requirement for players in ACF Mail National: being an ACF member in good standing. Indeed, someone may not want to be an ACF member, but want to play in event. No problems, but in this case player can't get a title and challenger rights, even if he wins an event, that's all.

Alex

======================================================================

My favor time control for fast games: 3/2. This is the time where I feel comfortable and still can see and calculate most things in the game. Anything below this drop my level and I don't like it much, however can still beat most of these clowns with 1/1 control. I can't play 1/0 because simply can't make physically 50-60 moves when it's necessary.

But with real clocks I can play 10 games for 6-8 minutes. Online play is more slow for me !!! No kidding.

[BillyBoy]

Hi Alex, Well spoken I agree I dont like low timers myself. And I think it takes everyones skill down alot compared to longer timers where people can use more insight. In reality when your both trying to beat a clock set for 1 minute your playing another game with a new objective. Billy

[Dennis Cayton]

I like a day or two to make my move.

Hello Pedro,

So do I.

When I play a game on my favorite turn-based web site, I follow a certain routine.

During the course of the day, I will take a look at my opponent's next move.

If I am uncertain as to where to move, I will set up my board and do some preliminary analysis, in order to determine what my next move might be.

Then I "sleep on it."

The next morning, I wake up and return to that game, complete my analysis for whatever it may be worth, and then for better or for worse, make my final decision as to where to move, and then make that move.

I just finished making such a move just a few minutes ago, about a couple of minutes before 6:00 a.m.

I like it that way.

Best Wishes,

Dennis

[Eric Strange]

OK, well we kinda got off of the subject but I will try to clear some things up for you guys.

Nobody thinks weaker of offline players because they can't play 1/0 online. We just enjoy our 1/0 games more than slower timers and there are reasons for this. First of all in playing online all these years we have grown accustomed to programmers who cheat online and the best method to prevent this from happening was playing 1/0 ....until 2004 or 2005 when the auto programs came into yahoo. I have been a 1/0 player since 2000 and also have NO PROBLEM playing slow games when I know who the person is. I can go 60-5 on a new name playing slow timers or 60-50 playing 1/0.

You can downplay 1/0 all you want but after you have played almost every line you play 100,000 times.... it is all memorization so there is no need to play slow... so then it becomes whoever can move the fastest. Good 1/0 players can finish a game down to 2 on 2 and make 50 moves before the timer runs out. 1/0 just adds more difficulty into the game. To be successful in 1/0 in Kurnik you MUST be a good players because we can finish the games easy in a minute... you cannot just move fast like John is implying. Years of playing like this we have trained our brains to see moves VERY FAST and generally make the right one.... of course we miss subtle key moves in certain positions in mid game but if you throw us into a tournament we can see ahead moves much faster than a typical player.

I play both slow and fast games so don't hate on me!!!

Anyways.... I don't want to attract so many players that already love the game..... I want to attract new blood!!!! like Happy Gilmore did for golf haha