Today The Checker Maven completes a dozen years of no-fail weekly publication, something we modestly believe is a significant accomplishment. We hope we've being doing our share in promoting the great game of checkers, and we do hope to be able to continue publishing for at least a few more years.

Someone who has contributed immensely to our game is Richard Pask, and to celebrate the "12" theme, we're taking a position that arises from Ballot 12 in his upcoming book, Complete Checkers. (It will be published by us most likely in spring 2017.)

BLACK

WHITE
White to Play and Win

W:W12,19,20,24,29,30,31,32:B3,4,6,8,9,11,13,17.

Black has just blundered with 2-6 instead of the "star" move given in the Complete Checkers text, 17-22. How does White bring home the win? We suppose you ought to get 12 minutes to solve it, or 12 attempts, or something of the sort, but just do the best you can. Then, you can click on Read More once (not 12 times) to see the solution.

Solution

White sets up a spectacular winning 3 for 3 shot as follows.

A---The text move is very natural, however a different continuation could be 6-10 11-7 8-11 7-2 10-14 2-6 15-18 24-19 4-8 19-15 17-21 15-10 18-23 10-7 3x10 12x3 to a White Win.

B---White has a definite winning game. One continuation might be as shown here.

White Wins.

The Checker Maven thanks all of our readers for making us so successful for so long, and we hope you'll stay with us as we continue to bring you our own unique brand of checker entertainment.