Marion Franklin Tinsley was an American mathematician and checkers player. He is widely considered to be the greatest checkers player ever. Tinsley was world champion from 1955–1958 and from 1975–1991 and never lost a world championship match. He 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. Derek Oldbury, sometimes considered the second-best player of all time, thought that Tinsley was "to checkers what Leonardo da Vinci was to science, what Michelangelo was to art and what Beethoven was to music."
Checkers, also known as draughts, is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve forward movements of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move".
English draughts or checkers, also called straight checkers or simply draughts, is a form of the strategy board game checkers. It is played on an 8×8 checkerboard 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.
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.
Alexander Moiseyev is a Soviet-born American draughts player. He holds the title of Grandmaster in international draughts, Russian draughts and English draughts. In this latter he was world champion in the 3-move variation from 2003 to 2013, winning five world championships, in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2009 and 2011.
Don Lafferty (1933–1998) was a Grandmaster checkers player. In 1982 he defeated Derek Oldbury for the World GAYP championship with a score of 1-0-23. He was challenged for the championship in 1984 by Paul Davis, winning easily 5-0-15. In 1986 he defended his title again by drawing James Morrison with a score of 0-0-24 and in 1989 he defeated Elbert Lowder 4-3-16.
Ron "Suki" King is a Barbadian 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.
Derek Oldbury was a British draughts champion from Devon. He was a rival of Marion Tinsley and, after Tinsley, "probably the second best player of all time." Oldbury was interested in Go As You Please (GAYP) draughts, a variant where players have the liberty to select their own opening moves.
KingsRow is a strong checkers and draughts engine. It was released by Ed Gilbert in 2000.
Patricia Breen is an Irish draughts player and among the leading women in the game. This is primarily in variants other than International draughts. She became Irish Women's Champion at 12. In 2001 she became the first woman player to represent Britain and Ireland in a Senior International Match against the United States and in 2003 won a silver medal at the English Open Draughts Championship, as runner-up to Fred Buckby.
The Fédération Mondiale du Jeu de Dames is the international body uniting national draughts federations. It was founded in 1947 by four Federations: France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.
Amangul Berdieva is an English draughts and international draughts player from Turkmenistan. She is twice women's world champion of English draughts in both 3-Move and GAYP versions.
Ion Dosca is a Moldovan Brazilian draughts player, international grandmaster since 1996 and world champion in 1999. Dosca also plays other variants of draughts, such as Russian checkers and pool checkers and won numerous national championships in both variants.
Viktoriya Leontyivna Motrichko is a Ukrainian draughts player, an International Grandmaster since 2005. She was the World champion in International draughts in 2023, World champion in Brazilian draughts in 2007 and the winner of the World Mind Sports Games in Russian checkers in 2008.
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.
Michele Borghetti is an Italian grandmaster of international draughts, Italian draughts and English draughts. In English draughts he was world champion in both 3-move and GAYP variations.
Sergio Scarpetta is an Italian grandmaster of English draughts and the current world champion in the 3-move version. He was world champion in the GAYP version from 2014 to 2016.
John Ray Webster is an American competitive checkers player, veterinarian, farmer, retired military officer, and musician. A national checkers champion and grandmaster, Webster won the United States Blitz GAYP title at the American Checker Federation National Championship in 2011. He has won the North Carolina Checkers Championship eleven times and represented the United States, as a member of the United States International Checkers Team, in the World Checkers/Draughts Championship in England in 1989 and Las Vegas in 2005. In 2011 he represented the United States at the World Qualifier Checkers Tournament in Italy.
Joan Caws was a British English draughts player. Caws was a multiple-times English champion, a 1979 British champion and the first Women's World champion, having successfully defended the title in 1987 and 1989.
Ireland 