Player information

Here I will present some information about the persons in our tournament, so that we can get to know the "real person behind the userid". (If you wish to share your own personal facts, just let me know. Nothing will be shown here without your permission.) I will begin with myself.

     My name is Terrel (Terry) Trotter, aka "kaprekar" [IYT userid]. I'm 61 yrs old & live in San Salvador, El Salvador. I'm a retired school teacher, field of mathematics. My website, "The World of Trotter Math", can be accessed by clicking the "Home Page" link at the bottom of this page.
     I'm married to a lovely Salvadorean woman, Gloria; we have 4 children (ages 34, 33, 31, & 19).
     (more later)

Spocko

Hi my name is Rick Valdron. I am 42 and by my userid you can tell that I am a trekkie. Spocko came from an episode in the original series. I like science-fiction and science-fantasy a lot, along with war games and strategy games. I have worked in industial roofing for the last 19 years. I live in London, Ontario, Canada. I am divorced and have 12 and almost 13 year old daughter and 16 year old step-son. I am a hardy Canadien. My daughter and I are clan of the wolf. hope to get pic to you soon

Tony Gardner

You already know my name and place of residence from my profile, and that I am a tenacious board game addict, so here is some more personal detail:

I was born on April 6, 1954 in Dayton, Ohio; grew up in Dayton, Cincinnati and Springfield. After high school, three years in Uncle Sam's Army, and two years of trade school I decided that the harsh northern winters really didn't fit into my desired comfort zone, and I've been living in or near Atlanta ever since.

I'm a trained and experienced accountant, good with details, figures and special projects; had various jobs, but never got along well with employers or bosses. For the past ten years I have fared much better as a househusband! Kathy (my darling wife of 16 years) is employed as an AS400 manager for a large conglomerate; her co-workers call her "the system sheriff".

As far back as I can remember, I've always loved playing board games of the mentally stimulating variety. Chess, Feudal, Twixt, Stratego, Scrabble, and Tri-Ominos are among my old favorites. At some point I began exploring the expansive world of chess variants, and in 1987 I was introduced to one particularly fascinating concept that would forever change my perception of all games and even of life itself! It is known as English Progressive Chess (ENPR, for short). There are in fact numerous progressive chesses, most of them characterized by wild, uncontrolled kamikaze play, but "English" adds movement rules which considerably refine the concept, making it more "chess-like", one might say.

For years, I played ENPR in an Italian club which has since sadly faded away. My record is +164 -11, and I'm generally regarded as the strongest player in the world, although the known field is only about 50 players. In 1995, I wrote a short treatise (18 pages) on ENPR, of which one prominent game reviewer stated, "a brief, yet authoritative and comprehensive survey of the game". Plenty of information on ENPR is available to anyone interested, and someday I hope to put together an e-mail club to play it. Nothing could match my zeal for this game, although there are several other chess variants I have played and enjoyed.

I am very glad to be part of the CK1 tournament, and looking forward to some interesting and intense battles, especially with some of my old fortress chess rivals!

Black Knight

Hello, my name is Malcolm and I am 52. I have worked as a Senior Biomedical Scientist in Laboratory Medicine at a very busy hospital in the centre of UK for about 33 years. I have a lovely wife and three children.

My hobbies include chess in all forms and variations, problem solving, digital photography, web site publishing, crown green bowling and dancing.

My nickname on IYT is Black Knight, which has nothing to do with the evil one. I am suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which is the name given to a group of disorders of the Retina, all of which result in a progressive reduction in vision. The Retina is the light sensitive tissue inside the eye in which the first stages of seeing take place. In RP disorders, various parts of the Retina cease to function. The symptoms of this group of disorders usually become apparent between the ages of 10 and 30, although some changes may become apparent in childhood. By contrast, some types of RP may only show symptoms late in life. In the more common types of RP, a person will have a history of visual problems at dusk or in poor light, so-called night blindness and a gradual reduction in the field of vision, loss of the outer edges, resulting in a tendency to trip over things. That is, everything is black at night, hence Black Knight. I have only 15% vision although my central vision is near perfect. I can see enough to continue working and, of course, to "play" on my computer.

I am very glad to be giving the opportunity to play in these tournaments and to hopefully be a champion one of these days. Beware Blind-Fury, Spocko, Tony and others, Black Knight is about!

Martin L.

Hi! My name is Martin Landry ("Peter Pawn" on IYT or "Indiagonal Jones" on "Brainking.com" or many others). I'm 44 years old and have 3 children, 2 girls, 1 little boy… separated. I've studied Ancient History, Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Montreal some many years ago, so what attracts me for the game of chess, is not only the game itself but all the "stuff" around… and the history of it for sure… I live in Quebec, Canada, so my natural language is French by the way.

I think the game of chess is something like a kind of "Art" while at the same time has an aspect of "scientific". I learned chess when I was a child from my father who told me how to play the game. Since then I have been fascinated by it, but I took it seriously only in my College years doing some competition in Quebec at the time… Afterwards, with a family, I had to refrain my desire to compete, so more recently I've turned to chess on the internet… which gave me some kind of same opportunities and more time maybe… However, as "virtual chess" is not the same as the "real thing", I often go to a little chess café at Montreal to play with some friends of mine time to time…

Beside the game of chess in itself, I like to play some variations of it, like King's Corner or King's Fortress (seems to be my speciality so far on IYT!) just to see how it works and how it can be interesting so far from the real chess game. At last, may I say we should all applaud our friend, Terry, who keeps records, crosstable and the organization with Tony for the tournament… Thanks, Terry!

I received the following comments from Tony:

     It looks to me, sitting here several hundred miles away from you, that White can just bust down the barn door with Bxe6! ... QxB or ... Kf8 loses immediately to Qh6, otherwise White can continue with hxg6. Being an avid tactician, I spotted that combination right away. It has been quite a while, but once for over 7 years I ran a column on chess problems for a game club magazine.