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G. Wayne Miller won the 1997 Inter-District (I-D) Checkers-By-Mail Tournament. This is the national championship of checkers-by-mail. Jerry Lattimer, a previous winner of the tournament, took 2nd place.
I took 6th place in the tournament, tying for 4th, and taking 6th on tie break (least games lost). The tournament was fairly tough. I played worse than the year before, but was lucky that other people let me off the hook. I went into several published losses, mistakenly thinking that I had found a way to draw. Jerry Childers, the World Checkers-By-Mail Champion, dropped out of the 1997 I-D, because of his health.
Checkers-by-mail is played on post cards. In the I-D tournament, each player plays 6 games, simultaneously, against each of the other competitors. Each player chooses one opening and the tournament director chooses one opening, and both players play both sides of these three openings. Normally, difficult openings are chosen. In order to qualify for the I-D tournament, a player must win his district mail-play tournament (or take second place if there are several entrants in the district tourney), the previous year. Here are the final standings:
| 1. | G. Wayne Miller, Windsor, MO |
| 2. | Jerry F. Lattimer, Waverly, NY |
| 3. | Bert Vanderpool, Athens, PA |
| 4. | Arnold Cook, Woodbury, TN |
| 5. | Matt T. Long, Jr., McComb, MS |
| 6. | Jim Loy, Bozeman, MT |
| 7. | Lester Balderson, Richmond, VA |
| 8. | James Frank Jones, Chicago Heights, IL |
If you need it to read the following, please print out the numbered board.
The opening chosen by the director (Earl Hangen) was opening #121A (11-16 23-19 16-23), which was known as the Barred Bristol. Now it is called the Black Widow.
Back in the olden days, you could choose any opening moves that you wanted. Two-Move Restriction, in which the first two moves are chosen at random, was designed to cut down on the number of draws. But, four openings were barred (as well as a couple that lost a piece immediately) from being chosen, because they were considered too tough. When Three-Move Restriction was invented, to further cut down on the number of draws, two of these formerly barred openings were accepted as being sound (i.e. not losses). This opening (11-16 23-19 16-23), was still barred, as a published loss. In Three-Move, there are several other barred openings.
Then Brian Hinkle started analyzing some of the barred openings, and Dennis Cayton started up The Starship Checkerprise mail ladder (in which all games are barred openings). Dennis Cayton has written a booklet on these openings, too. And four of these openings were found to be sound. These openings were accepted for mail play, and they are:
In last year's tournament, a player could choose one of these openings. But the opponent could veto the choice, and accept the first player's alternate choice. As a result, few games were actually played from this list. This year, we could force our opponents to play one of these, if we chose. It was hard work.