Ron King

Last updated

Ron "Suki" King (born 1956) 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.[ citation needed ]

Contents

In 1998 he made it into Guinness World Records for playing against 385 players simultaneously and beating them all. [1] His 2008 match against South African grandmaster Lubabalo Kondlo is the central subject in the documentary King Me. [2] [3] In 2014 he lost his world title in the GAYP ("go as you please") version to Sergio Scarpetta, as King failed to appear for the final four games. [4]

World Championship titles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Backgammon</span> Board and dice game for two players

Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Persia. The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to 17th-century England, being descended from the 16th-century game of Irish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Tinsley</span> American checkers player

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. 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."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Checkers</span> Board game

Checkers, also known as draughts, 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. 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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Schaeffer</span> Canadian researcher and professor

Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence.

American Pool Checkers, also called "American Pool", is a variant of draughts, mainly played in the mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States and in Puerto Rico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English draughts</span> Board game

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Moiseyev</span>

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.

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.

Samuel Gonotsky was a leading American checkers, or English draughts, player in the Two-Move Era (1863–1929). He was an important figure in the then famous Brooklyn Checker Club in the mid 1920s along with Louis Ginsburg and became the American Champion in 1924 when he defeated Alf Jordan in the national tournament. He also matched himself against a supposed automaton machine, Ajeeb, owned by Hattie Elmore which he later directed in matches. He is considered to be possibly the best "crossboard player" and the best US player of the 1920s.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Draughts Federation</span> International draughts governing body

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ryan Pronk</span> American checkers player

Ryan Pronk is a national checkers champion from Arizona. He holds the title of Arizona State and Western Regional champion. Ryan began playing checkers in the summer of 2000, at age 14, and played in his first tournament in 2002. In 2004 he became the Minnesota State Champion, Midwest Regional Champion, and Tennessee State Majors Champion. In 2005 Ryan won the United States Junior Championship, and repeated this victory in 2006 and 2007. In 2011, Ryan won the North Carolina 11-man ballot. Ryan lives in Virginia where he won the 2011 state championship. Ryan is ranked 20th draughts player in the world. He remains active in the checkers community.

Lubabalo Nicholas Kondlo is a player of English draughts from South Africa. He holds the title of grandmaster, and is the current world champion in the GAYP version.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Ray Webster</span> American checkers champion

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Webster (checkers player)</span> American checkers player and musician

James Jefferson Webster III, also known as Jeff Webster, is an American competitive checkers player, musician, and retired postmaster. He was the National Youth Checkers Champion in 1981 and the World Youth Checkers Champion in 1982.

References

  1. "The American Checker Federation -- Welcome to the ACF website". www.usacheckers.com.
  2. Parkersburg News and Sentinel for November 13, 2010
  3. "King Me - Cleveland International Film Festival :: March 30 - April 10, 2022". www.clevelandfilm.org.
  4. "Nation News".
  5. "The American Checker Federation -- Welcome to the ACF website".