Elbert Lowder (born 1932; died December 14, 2006) was American checkers champion noted for dominating the "11-man ballot". He worked as a

piano tuner Piano tuning is the act of adjusting the tension of the strings of an acoustic piano so that the musical intervals between strings are in tune. The meaning of the term 'in tune', in the context of piano tuning, is not simply a particular fixed ...

and was from

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. As one of the grandmasters who played against the Chinook program he is mentioned several times in

Jonathan Schaeffer Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer (born 1957) is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence. He led the team that wrote Chinook, the world's strongest American c ...

's book ''One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers''.

, ''One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers''. (Springer, 1997), pgs 94, 110, 126, 138-141, 143, 167, 243-244, 260-261, 263, 265, 267, 272-273, 368-369, 374, 447, and 554 Elbert Lowder was a member of the

United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...

References

American checkers players Players of English draughts Sportspeople from North Carolina 1932 births 2006 deaths {{board-game-stub 20th-century Methodists 21st-century Methodists American United Methodists