|
|
Checkers Game Champion
Newell William Banks
1887 – 1977
Checkers game champion Newell William Banks was an American checkers
and chess master, and was thought to be one
of the finest checker players of all time.
Due to a long life of ninety or so years,
he spent much of it facing opponents across
a checkerboard.
He began playing the game very early in life
and it has been noted that Newell Banks played
his first game of blindfold checkers
somewhere between the age of five and a half
and seven years at the Detroit Chess and
Checker Club.
The child prodigy obviously would have spent
many hours practicing moves and playing checker
games with numerous different opponents.
A player may possess a natural skill that
surpasses ordinary playing, but he would
still have to devote serious time to develop
the inherent ability and to hone the craft
to the next level of expertise. This is best
done through countless hours of tireless
play across the checkerboard.
While studying the game of checkers, checkers
champion Newell Banks also developed an interest
in the game of chess, and over the years,
he excelled at both board games. Newell Banks
learned the moves of chess at home from his
father. In 1901, at the age of 14, Banks
met a Russian refugee, named Schiffman. Before
leaving Europe, he had assisted two aspiring
young players, who were called Rubinstein
and Salve. When Schiffman saw the potential
in Newell, he took an interest in the young
boy, who from then on progressed rapidly
in the game of checkers.
This is indeed a rare phenomenon, for most
checkers players would likely favor and eventually
choose one or the other sport to play in
competitions. Banks seemed to enjoy devoting
time to both and challenged many masters
with equal time in checker and chess tournament
matches.
In 1907, at the young age of 21, Newell Banks
won the U.S.A. Championship in a checker
match where he defeated Hugh Henderson, a
strong Scottish player, now residing in the U.S.
During the month of August 1912, the second
American Checker Association tournament was
held at the Breakers Hotel with a purse of
$1000 as the prize fund. The tournament and
its purse attracted the interest of forty
masters and some checker players of lesser
skill.
Missing from this event were the former U.S.
champion, Charles Barker, who had died three
years prior at age 51, and A. J. Heffner,
who was unable to get time away from his
position as a railway clerk. Among the contenders
of the second tournament were such favorites
as two "transplants" to America:
the former English champion, Alfred Jordan,
and a Scottish competitor for the championship
of his native country, Hugh Henderson, who
settled in the coal district of Pennsylvania.
Henderson believed that he had been unjustly
passed over as the fifth member of the Scottish
team in 1905 in favor of checker master,
James Searight.
The forty checker contenders were divided
into four groups of ten each, wherein they
played a two game round robin, with the high
four from each group advancing to the single
knock-out master's tourney.
The sixteen players to advance to the checker
tournament finals were: Newell Banks, Alfred
Jordan, Hugh Henderson, Harry Lieberman,
H.B. Reynolds, Louis Ginsberg, Patrick Whalen,
John F. Horr, Julius D'Orio, F. R. Wendemuth,
L. J. Goldsmith, A. J. Klinka, T. J. Harrigan,
Sunset Bell, H. O. Newcombe, and L. R. Winnemore.
In the second round, Henderson defeated Horr
with a score of 3-1-4, Reynolds defeated
Whalen, Jordan beat Ginsberg, and Newell
Banks was defeated by Harry Lieberman. After
this hard checker match against John Horr,
Hugh Henderson defeated Alfred Jordan in
the semi-finals, and Reynolds in the finals
to become the first American Checker Association
and National Champion. This was a feat that
he had been unable to accomplish in his native Scotland.
Checkers Match
Newell William Banks Tied
Although Richard Jordan had never actually won the
world checker title, he was considered as World
Champion, and in 1914, Newell Banks challenged Jordan
for the title, but they tied the match. Then three
years later, in 1917, Richard Jordan challenged
Newell again for the championship, and this time,
Richard defeated checkers champion Newell Banks.
However, this defeat did not deter Newell Banks from
playing against James Stewart in 1922 for the checker
world championship, but unfortunately, once again
Newell was unsuccessful in his game play as Robert
Stewart won the match. After this game, Banks repeatedly
challenged Stewart but James simply refused to play
against Newell, but the reasons for this refusal
are still not clear.
The following article from the
March edition of
The British Chess
Magazine in 1922 discussed
champion Newell Banks as a checker and chess
player, and on this occasion Newell was in
England to play for the Draughts (checkers)
Championship of the World:
Mr. Newell Banks, of
Detroit, U.S.A., who has come to
England to play a match for the Draughts
Championship
of the World, is also a strong chess player...
At Draughts, or Checkers, as they call
it in America,
he was quite a “prodigy” for
he played a game blindfold at
the age of 7. At 21, he won the U.S.A.
Championship by
beating Hugh Henderson, formerly a crack
Scotch player.
Scotland is in fact the spiritual home
of draughts
(checkers), and the match for the world’s
championship,
aforementioned, is between Mr. Banks and
Mr. Robert
Stewart, of Kelty. Play commences at Glasgow
on January
28th, will be 40 games up, with the ‘two-move
restriction”
rule in operation.
Champion Newell Banks holds the record
for simultaneous play at
draughts (checkers) by contesting 102 games
at Boston,
USA,in 1915. He won 74, lost 4 and drew
the remainder.
All this only took two hours and 45 minutes.
Another notable performance was a combined
simultaneous
display of draughts (checkers) and chess
at City
Club, Cleveland, Ohio. Here, 47 games of
draughts and 28
of chess were played at the same time,
with the result
that the single player won 35 and drew
12 at draughts,
won 26, drew one and lost one at chess.
The match referred to resulted, after a
strenuous
fight on February 9th, in a victory for
champion Mr. Robert Stewart by
by two games to one while 37 were drawn.
This is a record
number of draws in a championship contest.
Mr. Stewart
won the fourth and eighteenth encounters,
and Mr. Newell Banks
the twenty-ninth. Experts, who were present,
affirm that
four chances of turning draws into wins
were missed.
Whether this is so or not will be proved
when the games
have been examined and annotated.
Newell Banks also loved the game of chess
and was known as one of the few board players
who had gained mastery at both games. In
1926, in the Master's Invitational Chess
Tournament in Chicago, Banks, the U.S. checker
champion, defeated Isaac Kashdan and U.S.
Chess Champion Frank Marshall, and drew with
former champion Jackson Showalter, Samuel
Factor, and Oscar Chajes.
Newell William Banks holds the world’s
championship speed record at mixed play,
which includes both board games of checkers
and chess. At one time he played 75 checkers
and 25 chess games simultaneously, while
also completing six games of blindfold checkers
in a total of four hours. The result of this
complex game play was that Newell won sixty-five
checkers games and drew ten, but he also
won four blindfold games and drew two. At
the same time, Newell Banks won twenty-two
chess games, losing only one, and drawing
two. This amazing display of game ingenuity
and absolute skill was took place in 1932
at an exhibition that was held at the Tuller
Hotel in Detroit.
Throughout his career, checkers champion
Newell Banks was a notable personality discussed
in many magazine and newspaper articles.
By 1933, Banks held all speed records at
blindfold and simultaneous checkers as evidenced
by his blindfold play of twenty games at
one time in a matter of two hours and twenty-five
minutes in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where
Newell won seventeen games, and drew three.
It was also noted that he set a new blindfold
speed record playing sixty-two games in the
course of four hours, and here he won sixty-one
with one draw. This exhibition match was
played at the Convention Hall in Detroit,
Michigan.
Also in that same year, at the Century of
Progress in Chicago, Newell Banks played
a phenomenal one hundred and forty games
of checkers simultaneously in two hours and
twenty-five minutes with a resulting score
of one hundred and thirty-three wins, and
seven draws. When the results are calculated
per game, the outcome was an incredible average
of about one move
per second. It is doubtful that many
checker masters could compete on that stage.
This was also an amazing testimony to the
talent and skill of this master checkers
game player.
In 1934, Newell Banks claimed the checkers
World Championship title since Robert Stewart
would not play in the competition; however,
England still considered Stewart to be the
champion. Later, Asa Long challenged Newell
for the checker championship and defeated
Banks in this match in 1934. By this match,
3-move restriction was in use, and this rule
called for the first three moves of the game
to be chosen at random from a list of accepted
3-move openings. This rule was applied to
prevent a lot of games ending in a draw,
and allowed for a greater number of checker
game variations.
|
|
