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BGonline.org Forums
How I came to like Paul Weaver
Posted By: David Rockwell
Date: Wednesday, 20 October 2010, at 3:57 p.m.
I first heard of Paul Weaver while playing Othello in Tennessee. One of my favorite Othello friends, Lee Edwards was hosting the tournament. Lee and I used to meet on Sunday morning to play Go on a small board on a pre-internet online server called the USA Today Sports Center. It was 1993. That year was the peak of my success at Othello. Later that year, I finished 3rd at the US Nationals losing only to David Shaman and Brian Rose, the US greats with four World Othello Championships between them. I actually had an endgame win against David, but failed to find the winning combination and he prevailed. The weekend in Nashville was fantastic. Lee showed me the Chess Castle, the local Chess club. I won every game at the Othello tournament, getting at least 46 disks against each opponent. After the tournament, I had time to talk with Lee about his other passions, especially table tennis. Lee assumed I played Backgammon since I played everything else except Makruk. And, he told me about someone he knew when he was a young adult, Paul Weaver. He said that Paul was a great backgammon player and a great guy. He just couldn’t stop talking about him. The weekend’s magic continued after that as we looked for other games to play. Lee didn’t play Shogi, so I had brought a XiangQi (Chinese Chess) set with me on the trip. But, what we really wanted to play in our free time was Janggi (Korean Chess). A XiangQi set is functionally adequate to play Janggi, but it looks different. Both the shape of the pieces and some of the script are different. So, we canvassed Nashville trying to find a Korean merchandise dealer who would sell us a Janggi set. Playing with the wrong set is a good way to mishandle one’s cannons. While we were out, I also wanted to find a hooker who would play Chess with us at the Chess Castle. I had heard they could be found on Nashville’s east side. But, in the days before the Internet, there was no way to know for sure. Unfortunately, the scavenger hunt didn’t go well and none of the hookers had a sense of humor, but Lee kept coming back to Paul Weaver. He told one story of admiration after another. He talked about Paul playing table tennis. We laughed about Paul’s convoluted sense of humor. And, most of all, I admired how Paul spends many hours a day working on becoming the most humble person on the planet. During my long drive back to Chicago, I made up my mind that I would wait ten years and then become a world class Backgammon player in hopes that I could meet Paul Weaver for myself. So, I actually liked Paul Weaver before I ever met him. And, that’s my advice to those of you who have not yet met Paul Weaver; like him first, meet him second.
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