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Checkers Game
Player John Drummond
(1806-1881)
Scotland has produced many fine, committed
checker game players throughout history. John
Drummond was another skilled checkers player and prolific
checkers game author as well as a very interesting
personage.
John Drummond was born on March 26, 1806, in Lawrieston
near Falkirk, Scotland, and as many other
checkers game players of his era, discovered the
great board game early. It is likely that
he would have spent his time in the same
way his contemporaries did by playing numerous
games with friends and gradually honing his
technique and checkers game strategies with time.
Player John Drummond, a physically large and strong
man, ran his own business in Denny as a master
slater, which was the trade of a professional
who covered roofs with slates. However, judging
by his checker game, John Drummond would also spend
time studying the board and analyzing moves
with the same tenacity that his fellow checker
masters showed in the mind sport. Checkers game player John Drummond
was a celebrated author and his famous book, Scottish
Draughts Player, contained countless
innovations and new ideas in the openings
of the game. John Drummond was honest and straight
spoken and not afraid to speak his mind on
many a subject.
Barker Woolhouse, a good friend from London,
remembered Drummond fondly in an account printed
by the Draughts
World:
"In 1844, John
Drummond was by me invited to visit London.
Drummond accepted the invitation and stayed with
me several weeks, and I had the supreme delight
of meeting a man whose enthusiasm, industry,
and patience were beyond description. Player John Drummond, his pockets
were literally stuffed with manuscript games
and improvements. I introduced him to my brother
who became very friendly with Drummond, taking
great interest in the second edition of the
Scottish Draughts Player and wrote an article
on the ‘move’, which appears therein.
Later, having lost the second edition of Anderson,
I wrote to Drummond to send me a copy. He
could not obtain one, but with extreme kindness
sent me his own copy, with improvements marked
on every page."
As a checker player, John Drummond was
amongst Scotland's strongest and finest,
in an era that heralded the great masters, Andrew
Anderson and James
Wyllie. John Drummond may have been one of the best
checker game players in his day.
Drummond played in seventeen checker matches
against different opponents and he was successful
in winning every one with a total of 146-47-0 games.
However, checkers wasn't the only challenge
that he enjoyed, for Drummond was also something
of a hustler in his day. John Drummond and his friend, John
McKerrow of Douglas, often traveled incognito
south to England to ‘relieve’ some
of the English natives of their money in
quick games. Not knowing the identity of
either man, seemed to encourage English locals
to participate willingly in whatever Drummond
and McKerrow had going at the time. It wasn't
so much that they were clever, but more that
they were brash about their money-making
schemes.
A local newspaper ran the following letter
written by Coltherd of Newcastle:
"...Now, as
regards names I think it only right to state
how two persons named Story and Flockhart
tried it on with the Newcastle players. In
the first place these men had John Drummond,
the author of the Scottish Draughts Player,
under the name of John Malcolm, against Harper
Coltherd for £10 a side, but he was
suspected to be Drummond and had the piper
to pay. They succeeded better in the next
match in which McKerrow of Glasgow under
the name J. Campbell of Hawick played the
said Harper Coltherd. McKerrow proved victorious
and Story had the impudence to say after
the stakes were drawn - 'We have walked over
them now!' I write this to put Englishmen
on their guard against these aliases of McKerrow
and Drummond."
Although checkers game player John Drummond did not gain the recognition
and popularity of Anderson and Wyllie, he was
none the less a talented checker player, and
his legacy lies perhaps more in his checker
study and game innovations discussed in his
writing. He died in Denny on April 11, 1881
and was buried in the town cemetery, with a
beautiful granite tombstone, which alludes
to his draughts association throughout his
life.
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