Today we're at long last presenting you with a newly-typeset electronic edition of one of the most complete books on the basics of the game ever published, Fred Reinfeld's How to Win at Checkers. We've previously written about Mr. Reinfeld and published a review of his book. Now, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Reinfeld's estate, who kindly authorized this edition, the book is available instantly, worldwide, and entirely free of charge. You can download it here.

Our further thanks and appreciation go out to anonymous checkerist "Mr. T." who scanned and edited the initial drafts of the new edition, reset the diagrams, and passed the results along to us.

To introduce you to the book, we've picked out a problem situation and present it below. (The book doesn't really have problems per se, just examples; but you can make your own problems by trying to solve the diagrams before looking at the text below them.) Here's a run-up to the diagram.

A---An inferior move played to set a trap (usually bad strategy). 11-15 was correct.

B---Loses; White should have played 18-14 to keep the advantage

WHITE

BLACK
Black to Play and Win

B:W32,31,30,28,27,26,24,23,22,21,18:B15,12,11,9,8,7,5,4,3,2,1.

We invite you to solve the problem, and then download the book to look up the solution (it is found under Diagram 33). We hope you enjoy and benefit from our new version of this classic work.