Local man wins national checkers title
BRANSON MO NEWS: WAYNE – Ted Williamson recently brought home the first place finish in the American Checkers Federation National tournament in Lebanon, Tenn.Williamson, of Wayne, is a retired teacher and now substitute for the Board of Education. He said he picked up the hobby of checkers in 2007 while he was temporarily homebound. Williamson was also a former football coach at Wayne and Buffalo Middle schools where he won multiple county championships for both teams.Williamson began playing checkers online and attended his first checkers tournament in August of 2007 at Morristown, Missouri.He said he learned how to play from Don Money, Claude Webb, and Boyd Smith – local guys in the Westmoreland and Kenova areas. Williamson is only one of two players from West Virginia to compete at the national level – the other is Charles Woolum from Delbarton, West Virginia.Williamson is big on the study of checkers and learning its origin. The game is traced back 3,000 years ago in the ancient region of Mesopotamia, what is now modern-day Iran. Spaniards wrote the first book about checkers around 30 to 40 years after the King James Bible was published in the 1500s.Williamson was also interested to find out, after joining the federation, that schools in South Africa and Barbados actually teach checkers in school.The American Checkers Federation hosts players from all over the United States and other countries such as South Africa, Barbados, Italy and the Ukraine.There are different styles of checkers such as “Go as You Please” (GAYP) and “Three Move Restriction.” This year’s tournament was GAYP and Williamson’s first championship win.There are three different divisions that players are classified under: Master, Major, and Minor. Master is rated above 2,000, Major between 1,700-1,999, and Minor is under 1,700 points. The more tournaments played have a huge variation on your …
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