"The Rarest of Payne's"--answer

[Mr. Checkers]

Recently "William Payne's--Game of Draughts"--(Revisited) was sent out to our close friends worldwide. "Checker Trivia question of the Day"? And still the question will always remain as to which of the Payne's is the rarest? (Cont.)

[Palomino]

From a colletor's point of view I think it would be more desirable to have an original version of William Payne's book "AN INTRODUCTION To the GAME of DRAUGHTS" (printed in 1756) but having the (sometimes referred to as) counterfeit version of Payne's book would be the rarest. I guess if you want to be certain you have the original you will have to own both versions because it seems no one knows for certain which book was printed first. I was told by my friend Gene Rader that several years ago there was quite a bit written on this subject in the ACF Bulletin and that a good bit of the evidence supports the idea of the rarer (so called) counterfeit version as having been printed first and that the more common (so called) orignal version was printed at some unknown later date. We may never know for certain which is which but both versions of the book are rare and there will always be a certain amount of satisfaction and pride of ownership in having either version of this classic book, in that it has the distinction of being the first book ever written for us on the subject of draughts/checkers in the english language.

Jim Loy, as a tribute to William Payne and in order to Commemorate the the 250th Anniversary of his book "AN INTRODUCTION To the GAME of DRAUGHTS" began publishing the book's 50 games, starting with games 1 -17, this past february in the ACF Bulletin (ACFB#319) under the title "NO PAYNE, NO GAME". I guess we can fairly say we have William Payne to thank for making draughts/checkers "The Grand Old Game" we enjoy playing so much today.

Regards, "Pal" Bucker

[liam stephens]

An authoritative article on the two versions of Payne's book was given by
A Parlow in the British Draughts Journal 1953. Rummaging through some old boxes of Draughts material stored in my attic, I recently came across the original manuscript copy of this article along with a covering letter from WG Parker the editor of the BDJ addressed to Mr Parlow concerning it. The correspondence also contains hand-traced reproductions of the unique watermarks contained in the differing paper used in the two versions.
Needless to say, I will not be offering this material for sale on ebay.

However, I am reproducing the Parlow article in Robert Waldteufel's site - in the Wyllie Online Draughts Club Forum, and also I hope some further interesting items re Mr Parlow. The WODC Forum is a wonderful place to be with contributions from Mac Banks among others. So read all about it at WODC.

[EdTrice]

By the way, Payne's solution to "4th position" was pretty close to the mark. After computing the perfect play databases, I found his solution was only off by 2 moves! That is, his solution took 2 moves longer than the database, which had mapped every possible way to play the position.

He did have a sub-optimal defensive move in there for the losing side, but overlooking that, I would say he was close to the mark.

I should reprint this analysis and the unusual way the database moves in order to win more quickly than Payne.

[Mr. Checkers]

More participant research needs to be done on this question. (Cont.)

[Mr. Checkers]

This year my good friend Al Darrow and myself have examined the writings of the literary scholars from the latter 1700's and 1800's, which concerned themselves with these two Payne's works. We have also contacted several leading university rare book librarians about them. Mr Darrow will be sharing our research findings with you later this year. One thing that we did discover was that there are several copies of both of these Payne's books in university libraries, museums and in private collections throughout the world. This finding then brings us back to our original "Checker Trivia question of the Day"? We will have to give that recognition to a little known, rarely ever seen copy of Payne's from the year "1799". After that then there is another rarely ever seen copy of Payne's--"1795", which is a very small book. The Dean's Payne's from 1810 is also very rare and seldom seen. (Cont.)

[Chexbibliophile]

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