gooner:

I am not always trying to convince anyone of anything. People that lose to me are the ones trying to say "he must be using a computer."

What computer was I using when I defeated the Deep Thought chess supercomputer in 1989 when I played it in front of about 100 people?

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1272214

What computer program was I using when I beat Chinook on October 20, 1996? (see the link Purple posted to the Wall of Honor). If you count from the bottom up you will see I was the 5th or 6th person to ever defeat it on the highest setting.

I would like to remind you that it was this feat that put me in touch with Gil Dodgen. He was impressed with my win, and we agreed to collaborate on a new checkers program, WCC. We relased it as a Macintosh program in August of 1997 and a PC program in September 1997.

Year later, when visiting Gil at his home in southern California, he asked me to play WCC an 11-man ballot game on a computer that was averaging 400,000 positions per second. Not only did I get a draw with it, I predicted 12 moves it must make in order to secure this draw. Don't take my word for it, ask him yourself. His email is GilDodgen@cox.net and I'm sure he will vouch for my playing abilities.

I don't understand why you keep saying you made no such arrangements to meet and play checkers. Then why did you say I was "reluctant"? You told me you were coming to Philadelphia, you said you wanted to play, and I agreed.

Once you got here, I did not hear from you.

So what?

I have had players try and meet me before. I was in Kansas City in 2001 and I called Al Lyman. He could not play because he said he was going to some log cabin with a son-in-law or something. Leo Levitt wanted to meet with me one time, but his wife had to be taken to the hospital, and he could not swing by.

I didn't accuse them of fabricating anything. Stuff happens.

And if I am such and "amateur", as you say, just answer me this one question:

Why did the current World Champion ask me to annotate one of his favorite games?

I would love to hear your conspiracy theory on that one.