Herman Hoogland (October 31, 1891 in Utrecht- November 25, 1955 in Utrecht) was the first draughts (also known as "checkers") world-champion from the Netherlands. He dominated the game for over a decade and became a leading student of it. He began playing the game seriously in 1908 at age seventeen. In 1912 he became world champion for the first time. From 1923 onward he became an advocate for a different way of playing the game.
Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Its history can be traced back nearly 5,000 years to archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. It is a two-player game where each player has fifteen pieces that move between twenty-four triangles (points) according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to be first to bear off, i.e. move all fifteen checkers off the board. Backgammon is a member of the tables family of games, one of the oldest classes of board games.
Marion Franklin Tinsley was an American mathematician and checkers player. He is considered to be the greatest checkers player who ever lived. Tinsley was world champion 1955–1958 and 1975–1991 and never lost a world championship match, and lost only seven games from 1950 until his death in 1995. He withdrew from championship play during the years 1958–1975, relinquishing the title during that time. It was said that Tinsley was "to checkers what Leonardo da Vinci was to science, what Michelangelo was to art and what Beethoven was to music."
Draughts or checkers is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Draughts developed from alquerque. The name 'draughts' derives from the verb to draw or to move, whereas 'checkers' derives from the checkered board which the game is played on.
Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence.
Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov was an eminent Soviet chess player, chess writer, and checkers player. He is part of an elite group of players who never became World Champion, yet created chess masterpieces of enduring brilliance. According to Pishkin, the list includes Chigorin, Reti, Spielmann and especially Nezhmetdinov.
Dirk Kuijt is a Dutch former professional footballer. Originally starting out as a striker, he played much of his career as a winger.
English draughts or checkers, also called American checkers or straight checkers, is a form of the strategy board game draughts. It is played on an 8×8 chequered board with 12 pieces per side. The pieces move and capture diagonally forward, until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are crowned and can thereafter move and capture both backward and forward.
Asa Long was an American checkers player, winner of multiple US Championships, spanning more than sixty years, and a one-time World Champion.
Ulf Bo Samuelsson is a Swedish-American former professional ice hockey defenceman who currently serves as assistant coach of the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League. He played several seasons in the NHL with the Hartford Whalers, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings, and Philadelphia Flyers. He was a two-time Stanley Cup champion as a member of the Penguins in 1991 and 1992 and is the first european player to have 2,000 career penalty minutes.
Chinook is a computer program that plays checkers. It was developed between the years 1989 to 2007 at the University of Alberta, by a team led by Jonathan Schaeffer and consisting of Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Martin Bryant, and Norman Treloar. The program's algorithms include an opening book which is a library of opening moves from games played by checkers grandmasters; a deep search algorithm; a good move evaluation function; and an end-game database for all positions with eight pieces or fewer. All of Chinook's knowledge was programmed by its creators, rather than learned using an artificial intelligence system.
Ron "Suki" King is an English checkers player from Saint George, Barbados. He has won twelve world championship titles at the game and is considered one of the strongest players of the game. King has been honored by his homeland being named Barbados's Sportsman of the Year in both 1991 and 1992. He has been called the Muhammad Ali of the checkers world for his trash-talking.
Iser Kuperman, sometimes spelled Koeperman, was an originally Ukrainian Jewish player of international draughts from USSR. Iser Kuperman has been the seven-time world champion, the four-time Panamerican champion, many time champion USSR in international draughts and russian draughts. He was an International grandmaster.
The Southern Hockey League was a low-level minor professional ice hockey league that operated from 1973 to 1977. The league was formed when the Eastern Hockey League split in two; the southern teams became the Southern Hockey League, and the northern teams became the North American Hockey League. It was the first professional hockey league to operate wholly within the Southern United States, and followed the establishment of the Atlanta Flames in the National Hockey League; and also the Richmond Robins and the Tidewater Wings in the American Hockey League. The Southern Hockey League was a feeder league for the recently started World Hockey Association. Tedd Munchak was appointed the league's first commissioner, and was owner of the Greensboro Generals. The championship trophy of the league was named the James Crockett Cup, after local figure Jim Crockett Sr. The league disbanded during its fourth season, when four of its seven teams folded due to financial issues.
Tapa (Тапа) is a version of Backgammon played in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. It is also played in Greece, where it is known as Plakoto. The word tapa means bottle cap.
Charles Clendell Walker is a former Mississippi state checkers champion and minister. He founded the International Checker Hall of Fame in Petal, Mississippi in 1979. Walker is also known in checkers history for his record-setting victories in simultaneous checkers matches. In a January 1992 match that lasted over eight hours, he played 229 checkers games simultaneously. He won 227 contests, lost one and tied one. In 1994, he set a Guinness World Record while playing 306 checkers games simultaneously and losing only one.
Lines of Action is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Claude Soucie. The objective is to connect all of one's pieces into a single group.
Richard Lee Fortman was a champion checkers player and authority on the game.
The Charlotte Checkers were a minor league professional ice hockey team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The team began as the Baltimore Clippers in 1954, playing in the Eastern Hockey League. When the arena in Baltimore burned down, the team briefly played as the Charlotte Rebels, before permanently relocating to the Charlotte Coliseum in 1956, becoming the Charlotte Clippers. The team was renamed the Checkers in 1960, and played its final four seasons in the Southern Hockey League, before folding in 1977. The Clippers/Checkers franchise won five playoff championships in its existence, and were the first team to be based in the Southeast United States.
The Charlotte Checkers are a minor-league professional ice hockey team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the American Hockey League (AHL), and are the top minor league affiliate of the Florida Panthers and Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Checkers play their home games at Bojangles' Coliseum. The current organization is the third team by this name; it succeeded a Checkers franchise that played in the ECHL from 1993 until the end of the 2009–10 ECHL season. The original Checkers team played in the city from 1956 to 1977, originally in the Eastern Hockey League and then in the Southern Hockey League. The franchise is one of six teams to replace and share a name with a predecessor franchise from a lower-tier league; the others are the Bakersfield Condors, Colorado Eagles, Ontario Reign, Rockford IceHogs, and San Diego Gulls.
The World Checkers/Draughts Championship is the tournament of English draughts which determines the world champion. It is organised by the World Checkers/Draughts Federation. The first edition of the men's championship was held in the 1840s, predating the men's Draughts World Championship by several decades. The women's championship has been held since 1986. There are championships held in two versions. One is 3-Move, where players don't begin their game in the starting position but a position three moves in the game. The other is GAYP, where players start from the very beginning.