Lees' Guide on eBay

[jaguar72]

There is what looks to be a very nice copy of Lees' Guide on eBay with a starting bid of only $4.99 and $3.00 shipping. Search "checkers books" on eBay to see it. It's a book every checker player should have just for the history. The small dimensions make it easy to carry about.

Yeah, I know, it's (I think) available free online and you can probably download it to your Kindle or iPad (there is probably a Lees' Guide app...) or Nook or any other landfill future resident but if you do that you miss the fun of reading the notes (with a magnifying glass) and using a .05mm pencil to make caustic and clever notes of your own near your favorite variations. Doesn't get any better than that. It really is a terrific book.

Besides, the chicks at the coffee shop really dig guys who can whip out a Lees' Guide and point out a forced win in, for example, variation 2 of the Ayrshire Lassie by citing note j. Very impressive, let me tell you...better than being a rock star or heartthrob movie actor.

Works for me.

And there you have it.

V/R,

Gary Jenkins/jaguar72

[Jason Solan]

Indeed any PDN app would be pretty cool.

Anyone willing to pay for such an app?
I've got too many other things I'd like to work on, but would love to play with some of the mobile dev-kits out there to start writing apps.

I think I can do something like what John is talking about with my online board, but someone would need to flag which games are "published play". Currently I have over 10,000 games from Nationals and World Title matches that Jim Loy sent me.

I think Lee's guide is floating around in PDN format as are a few other books that Eric has on his site.

[jaguar72]

John and Jason,

You mean that Apple really doesn't currently have a Lees' Guide app??? Ah well, Steve Jobs is gonna hear about this.

Life is full o' disappointments; this is just one more... .

Speaking of which, I thought I had seen Lees' Guide in a .pdf format somewhere on the web; perhaps I was mistaken (nothing unusual in that...).

I think the last edition was published in 1944 (I think I read that on Bob Newell's site), although it's long been out of print. In that case, is it still copyright protected? Anybody know?

V/R,

Gary Jenkins/jaguar72

[jaguar72]

There are a few PDFs on Google Books, though I'm not sure which editions they are. Here's one: http://books.google.com/books?id=SxsCAAAAYAAJ. I suspect, but am not sure, that if a copyrighted text is revised then the older edition remains under copyright, so I suspect that LG is in the public domain. Jim Loy has the games here: http://www.jimloy.com/lees/lees.htm.

Thanks, John. I knew Jim Loy had posted the games but for some reason I could not find the Google Books version which was the one I was thinking of...probably didn't try hard enough, I reckon. When I mentioned a download in my original post, the Google Books .pdf version was the one I had in mind.

I would suspect as well that the book is in the public domain.

I wonder if the girls at the coffee shop will be as impressed with the electronic version? Doubtful.

V/R,

Gary Jenkins/jaguar72