The British Navy at the dinner table

[Alan Millhone]

Hello Everyone:

I belong to a small group headed up by Mr. Victor Niederhoffer. His group is called the 'Spec. list' and many things are discussed on this closed group. At various times emotions run high and members will make a posting about religion, race, politics,etc. that is not acceptable. Mr. Niederhoffer will then make a post reminding Spec. list members that we follow the rules of the British Navy at the dinner table of what to and what not to discuss.

The A.C.F. has little to no input as to WCDF activities. Thus I have avoided this topic 100%. Of late I have received many emails complaining about nasty postings on the ACF Forum. Many of the postings have gotten too far out of hand and does nothing to enhance and promote our game.

ALL negative postings are to cease at once !! The forum has drifted to another low as far as content. Let us get back to what we all love:-) The game of Checkers/Draughts. It is fine to disagree in a polite and constructive manner.

Sincerely:
Alan Millhone, President ACF

[bugs]

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[Alan Millhone]

Hello Everyone:

All of us can find common ground to agree to disagree as long as it promotes our game and its players. All of us should be able to openly express our opinion without fear of being attacked. So the rules of the British Navy at the dinner table apply in all situstions and holds all of us accountable. There will never be a perfect rating system nor scoring of tournaments that will please each and every one of us. Be nice to each other, life is way too short.

Sincerely:
Alan Millhone, President
American Checker Federation

[JohnAcker]

Very well, then. Here's my opinion: rules mean nothing if there are no consequences behind their enforcement. We've seen the velvet glove, now where's the iron fist??

[Alan Millhone]

Hello John:

I respect your opinions and others relating to ratings, tournament scoring , etc. I even have my own views on a few things ----- Imagine that

I feel if you win a lower group then you move up forever . I feel that to advertise in the ACF Bulletin you need to at least require ACF Membership in the Masters. I would like to see clocks used and games recorded and then turned in to the tournament referee. The upcoming Ohio Tournament will require ACF Membership, use of timing clocks and recording of games. I see nothing wrong in standardizing the game and all tournaments using one set of rules and the results (cross tables) submitted to a processor in a timely fashion for postings of results. Also if your tournament is not ACf sanctioned then the ratings from the tournament not be used in the rating process by the ACF. None of this is cocertion nor blackmail, just a way to " professionalize " the game. I welcome any and all comments,as long as they are constructive and civil in content. I received several comment sheets from players from our Lebanon, Tennessee Nationals. Those comments will be processed to try and make our next Nationals that much better. One of our GM players has sent me two emails with all his thoughts as to scoring. Nothing any of you submit will be swept under the rug . Also nice if players would use decent boards at tournaments. I have had to play on some so scratched,etc. that they need to be discarded and a new one bought . Mr. Roger Blaine is the official ACF equipment dealer and you can order boards and regulation Crisloid pieces and Steelman boards from him on our ACF Store. Roger does an excellent job for our ACF and ships items to all corners of the globe. On another note at our recent Nationals Mr. and Mrs. Ray Shelly sold lovely ACF hats and ACF patches and recently sent me a check for 10% of their sales. Mr. Shelly feels (I agree) that if you have an audience say at a Nationals run by the ACF or if you advertise and sell in the ACF magazine a person should pay 10% to the ACF .

Sincerely:
Alan Millhone, President
American Checker Federation

[vhabgood]

One thing I would like to work on in the future is a better ACF gaming site. I have toyed with this idea for the last few years and have considered developing my own. I think the internet has not generated enough new players, although we have seen some. There are over 50,000 people logging in every day to play a game of checkers at some website online. The question is, how can we get even 1% of these people as ACF members and participating in local and (maybe in the future) ACF online tournaments. Every member has some ideas on how we can "correct" this and that about the ACF, but few actually act on it. I would really like to do this in the next 5 years.

[B Salot]

Hi Vic,

I suspect we are all in favor of continuous improvement, but most of us individually do not feel capable of expressing our thoughts constructively, or we fear doing so would only invite criticism. I applaud you for raising a constructive issue.

What is needed to make an organizational improvement is a consensus. To reach a consensus, a specific proposal needs to be brought to the organization for review, for give-and-take discussion, and for probable revision. Since proposals of any kind seldom achieve unanimous support, there needs to be a fair and effective way to poll the membership.

What I suggest is that you start a new topic, and post under it a tentative proposal in some detail with a request for comment. Knowing you, I will probably support it. Knowing me, I will probably try to upgrade it.

At some point, the web master should be queried about providing a polling procedure.

I look forward to learning more about your idea.

Bill Salot

[Eric Strange]

I feel if you win a lower group then you move up forever .

I feel the same way Alan. Do you believe if someone wins majors 3-move they should have to move up to master in a gayp tournament or vice versa?? I myself have pondered this idea and think that gayp and 3-move should be kept seperate as far as this goes but I would like more opinions on this.

Vic,

I have had this same idea for years but have not had the money to make it happen. I am constantly working on my archive site that when done will have almost every game from every book and games from every pdn or pgn archive that you can watch in real time played out on a Playok.com (kurnik) archive board. Currently I only have the entire OCA database on the site. I constantly search for someone who knows java or javascript well enough to create a multi user gaming applet at cheaper prices than rentacoder.com. I have also asked marek (the owner of kurnik) for the source of his applet so I could have it edited for my own checkers site. I own hosting as well as a domain name called cross-board.com. the OCA database is located

http://cross-board.com/forums/index.php?act=checkers

It has lees guide on there also but the jumps aren't correct in it. You have to wait for it to load and then click OCA database dropdown. it has all or most of the tournament games played from 1800's to 2004 categorized by year and who played who.
If anyone wants to put up funding to get this website finished and even add a multi-user gaming applet like kurnik but with a lot of really great additions as well as incentive to join the ACF you can message me and I will let you know where u can donate. (I have everything planned out in my head already)

On another note I have been expected and had volunteered to do ACF ratings. I have been trying to work on it but I have a job from 0800 - 1700 and then I own another remote assistance and local computer support company that I manage when I get off of work. Any time I have extra is spent with my daughter and wife. My time is pretty much used up. My coder who was going to build the software for this has been busy converting HUGE professional websites to the newest version of IPB and just does not have the time to do work for me for FREE anymore. Unfortunately he told me this after I took on this job.
If someone wants to catch the ratings up to "CURRENT" using the elo system I would be able to keep it updated 1 tournament at a time. But trying to incorporate the new rating system into our beloved game and catch up over 2 years would take too much time for me. I am sure John will rub my face in this one but that's ok.

Sorry for the extremely long post but it has been a while since I came here. Everyone take care of yourself and I hope to see you at kurnik!! my main handles there are 420, whilter and kid. I would enjoy playing a few games with any of you.

[tommyc]

If there was a prize for honesty hard work and good sense Eric yud win easy.............its obv your a busy guy doing his best ,sure who could ask for more..gl.

[Eric Strange]

Thanks tommy

[Irma Sierra]

I went immediately to Eric's site, but in the Dreaded Edinburgh (9-13, 22-18, 6-9) the third option of DRAW is not working well and as I am novice couldnt follow the game anymore.... I think that is a super good way to learn checkers...woww, I hope you can get what you want and I would be grateful for it.

[Eric Strange]

Irma,

The only section of my site that is working is the OCA DATABASE category. The rest of it is messed up because the kurnik archive applet could not read the double and triple jumps in the PDN format.
Under the OCA database is over 20,000 games so that should keep u busy for a while

[Irma Sierra]

Yessssssss!!

[Patrick Parker]

can someone tell me why i see bugs posts here
and i see

.....

little dots and nothing else ?

[Patrick Parker]

alan one thing i disagree with is not allowing tounaments to be rated if they arent acf sanctioned....i know why its a good idea
only thing is that...we wouldnt have very many rated events