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Checkers Champion William Edwards1915-1998Looking across the Atlantic to the distant shores of South Wales brings to mind another great British draughts/checkers player by the name of William Edwards. This Welsh gamer was born January 28, 1915, in Penrhiwceiber, which was a small coal mining village in South Wales. William Edwards was soon nicknamed ‘Bill’, and as was the case of a number of the checker greats in history, he was introduced to the game of checkers by his father, John. Bill was initially encouraged by his father to learn the rudimentary elements of checkers by offering the boy a penny for every simple problem he could solve. So by the age of twelve, Bill began to develop his checkerboard skills in a very positive and lucrative checkers environment. It didn’t take Bill Edwards very long to accumulate a nice little stash of pennies as he continued to work through elementary game situations and developed a solid interest in game fundamentals that would gradually improve his playing strength in the checkers game. Three years later, John Edwards introduced the teenager to other checkers players at a local checker club, and here Bill met numerous different gamers who had acquired an expert or masters level within the checkers milieu. One such checkerist was William Morgan, a talented crossboard checker player. Morgan was willing to take the precocious youngster under his wing for several years. Bill Edwards early checkers career certainly gave evidence to the great tutelage of William Morgan as one of Bill’s first major rewards was to win the Glamorgan Open Championship in 1934, at the age of just nineteen. This feat was a tremendous achievement for the lad because he did not score a single loss in any game in a tournament, which had attracted some of the top Welsh players of that period. Unfortunately, Fate stepped into the mix a few weeks later this impressive checker performance as Bill Edwards was involved in a serious coal-mining accident that crushed his left foot and necessitated that he spend several months in the hospital. This unexpected medical sojourn removed Edwards from the checker playing scene for the next three years. Undoubtedly, he spent time during his hiatus continuing to develop and hone his game skills in checkers until he finally decided that it was time to get back into the checker circle, and so he entered his first Welsh Open Championship, but had only a month to prepare for the tournament. Still, the young checkerist managed to win this prestigious event ahead of such renowned checker masters as Graham Davies, who was later to become the British Open Champion, and Alf Huggins, who was also later to win the British Open Championship and become the World Correspondence Champion. He also defeated Ivor Edwards, who was no relation to Bill, and Ernie Rees, all of whom were players of grandmaster strength. Edwards pursued the checkers game with a passion and gained several major victories in the mind sport, but then there was another period of checker inactivity at the national level when Bill joined the service and spent six years in another kind of strategy game. After his discharge, Edwards was back in the checkers arena again. With little preparation for the game, he entered the English Open Championship in 1948. It was at this tourney that Bill met and befriended the legendary checker grand-master, Derek Oldbury. Edwards had maintained his checkerboard techniques and did well in the tournament, for it was only in the final match of the competition that Bill Edwards was defeated by an extremely strong crossboard player, Percy Crabbe. However, there were also unusual circumstances to be considered at this point in the championship, and Bill may have had a better chance had the timekeeper not been incompetent. He announced that Bill Edwards had to make eighteen moves in the remaining two minutes when, in reality, he had only to make two moves in the time allotment! So, of course, this placed a lot of unnecessary pressure upon the checker champion and while attempting to play the required number of moves in such a short time caused Edwards to make an error in his checker game. This blunder proved fatal for Bill as Crabbe capitalized upon it and subsequently won the match.
Between 1953 and 1955, Bill Edwards challenged checker masters in their games, and succeeded in winning three more Welsh Championships. At this point, however, Bill decided that it was time to permanently retire from the checkers game and he withdrew from the checker arena to get married. During the winter of 1971, I discovered some old documents in the attic, which revealed the illustrious checker playing career of my father, which, hitherto, he had only briefly talked about. Intrigued by his past, I asked whether his interest might be rekindled to the extent of playing in another tournament, at which point he seemed dubious. Within a day or so, I bought a checkerboard and pieces, as I was desirous of seeing how skilful he was! To my astonishment, I was shown an entirely different game to the one I knew as a small child and wanted, quite naturally, to learn more. Having a checkerboard and pieces before him for the first time in sixteen years must have served as the catalyst in his comeback, for it was only a few days later that my father and I visited Cardiff YMCA ~ the scene of many Welsh Championships ~ in pursuit of meeting the players whose skills had graced that wonderful Victorian building. After an hour's wait, two gentlemen in their late eighties walked into the room. My father strode up to them and extended his hand as if the many years, which separated their last meeting meant nothing. “Bill Edwards!” exclaimed the older of the two. “And you are my old friends Steve James and Stan Bassett,” replied my father. I looked on stupefied and said, “Now I see why checker players have to have such great memories!” It didn’t take long for the checkers bug to touch Bill Edwards’ heart and soul again, and within a few months of that memorable meeting with old friends in a very familiar checkers environment, he began to study anew checkers literature such as the Ryan/Wiswell book,‘World Championship Checkers’, as well as numerous others that contained as many of the games of his idol, Marion Tinsley, as possible.
Edwards also entered in the 1987 Irish Open Checker Championship, and once again displayed his checkers prowess by winning that tournament as well.
As a player my father was blessed with a phenomenal memory, often memorising dozens of games daily and retaining them for use in tournaments years later! It was not by memory alone however that he was able to defeat the finest players of Great Britain and Ireland over almost thirty years. His crossboard skills were of the highest order, often visualising twenty-five moves in the most complicated positions. I tested this ability on countless occasions, often presenting him with the most convoluted positions imaginable. The outcome was always the same. After a couple of minutes he would say, “Yes, I can see it now. The piece on square twenty-seven will be lost in twenty-four moves!” As a person, he was liked instantly by all who met him. He exuded a calm at the checkerboard such as I have never seen and was a quality which undoubtedly assisted him to win a unique number of major tournaments. Moving a piece on a checkerboard was something he did with an elegant style and was sheer poetry in motion to behold. Always modest in success and congratulatory to the few who beat him, Bill will be remembered not only as the greatest Welsh player to date, but as a person with a big heart who loved everyone. William “Bill” Edwards died peacefully at Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, during the early hours of Thursday the 23rd July 1998, aged eighty-four years. Only hours before his passing, he asked me how the British Open Championship was progressing, an indisputable testimony to his deep love of checkers. Pat McCarthy was to later write to me saying, “Your father’s play had a touch of genius about it.” Coming from a player my father regarded as a phenomenal crossboard player, this was a fine eulogy indeed. |
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