About The Checker Maven

The Checker Maven is an internet magazine or "webzine" with a focus on Anglo-American 8x8 "straight" checkers/draughts. The intended audience is checker fans of all skill levels, from beginner to expert. The Checker Maven publishes problems, studies, games, news, features, and just about anything that is of interest to the serious checkerist. Since the editor is just barely an intermediate level player, however, you might find that reflected in the content; our class of player needs much more explaining and tutoring than the expert players!

The Checker Maven compliments the checker feature pages on the main bobnewell.net website, and shares the same philosophy: that checkers is a game for everyone, a mind sport for the common man, and a great pastime and intellectual pursuit whose depth is not always seen or appreciated. The Checker Maven aims to present the pleasures of checkers to the world at large.

One or more new Checker Maven articles are published each week, almost always early on Saturday morning, though once in a while we publish special, extra editions on other days. Circumstances may at times cause missed publication dates; while we do our utmost to avoid this, we unfortunately can't provide guarantees.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome; just email. If you'd like to write a feature for The Checker Maven let us know what you have in mind; guest articles are always of interest.

The Checker Maven is published as a service to the checker playing community, and is a non-commercial operation. No fees are (or ever will be) charged and donations are not requested and will not be accepted if offered (with one exception: if you wish to give us or lend us checkerbooks suitable for use in our electronic republication project, we will accept).

We do from time to time offer and endorse products, services, web-sites, etc., that we feel are worthy and of interest to the checkerist. However this is done entirely, and only, on our own initiative. When we offer a product for sale, it is as a service to the checker-playing public, and is largely on a cost-recovery basis. Any net proceeds are used to partially subsidize our web hosting costs, which we've been able to reduce to about $100 a year, and the very high costs of our electronic checkerbook republication project. (We paid $300 for a book scanner, and checker books are costly; the last one we purchased was $75.) Product sales provide our only (potential) income.

In addition to never charging a subscription fee or soliciting donations, we do not and will not participate in banner, ad-word, or other advertising programs. Please do not ask us to sponsor your product, use your advertising banner, or link to your commercial web-site, even on a link-exchange basis; we will invariably decline.

The Checker Maven may at times include copyright material, under the "fair use" principle. If you own the copyright to something that appears here and you think we should not be using it, let us know and if you're right we'll remove it at once.

The Checker Maven is offered on an as-is basis with no express or implied warranties of accuracy or usability. You must make your own determination at your own risk.

The Checker Maven is dedicated to Mr. Bob Newell, Sr.; may his memory be for a blessing.

Enjoy The Checker Maven and the grand old game of checkers!