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Bert Vanderpool won the 1999 Inter-District (I-D) Checkers-By-Mail Tournament (the national championship of checkers-by-mail). I took 2nd place, winning a "brilliancy" against Jerry Childers, a former Checkers-by-Mail World Champ (See J.Childers-J.Loy, 1999 I-D). I played better than ever before. But there is much room for improvement. In particular, I made two typos against Vanderpool (one loss which I may have lost anyway, and one draw in a winning position shown below).
In this tournament, each player played 6 games, simultaneously, against each of the other competitors. Each player chose one opening and the tournament director chose one opening, and both players played both sides of these three openings. 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. This particular tournament lasted longer than others, as one game was finished in March, 2000. Here are the final standings:
If you need it to read the following, please print out the numbered board.
Vanderpool-Loy, 1999 I-D
9-13 24-20 11-16 (one of the newest mail
play openings, a near-win for White) 20-11 8-15 23-18 3-8 18-11 8-15 27-24
(Elbert Lowder) 5-9* 32-27 (24-20 is the main line in Cayton's 1997
Compilation) 1-5 (9-14 or 15-19 also draw in Cayton's
Compilation) 22-17 (The line that I had been studying) 13-22 25-11 7-16
29-25 2-7 (Childers, Sheehan, Balderson, and Schumann all went 4-8 here.
Childers and Sheehan drew, and the others lost) 25-22 9-13 22-18 4-8 24-20 8-11
27-24 10-15 26-22 7-10 30-26?(A) (My typo. See note A for what I thought
I was doing) 6-9 26-23 10-14 24-19 15-24 28-19 draw.
A - 31-26 (I thought that this was an easy win, but queries from Childers showed that the win was not obvious) 6-9 (16-19 26-23 WW, Loy) 26-23 9-14 (10-14 24-19 15-24 28-19 11-15 19-10 WW, Loy) 18-9 5-14 24-19 15-24 28-19 11-15 20-11 15-24 22-18 10-15 18-9 24-27 9-6 27-31 6-2 31-27 2-6 27-18 6-10 15-19 10-15 WW Childers, 1999 I-D Booklet.
Note: In the booklet, page 7, note A-1, the first parenthesis is incorrectly attributed to Loy. It was originally published by Denvir.