Man vs Machine: the legacy of Marion Tinsley Who was Marion Tinsley? Nothing more and nothing less than the greatest player of checkers - a 5,000-year-old game that almost everyone knows how to play but only a few thousand people compete in seriously- in history. Tinsley was born in Ironton, a small town in Ohio, on February 3, 1927, and, like many residents of the American Midwest, learned to play checkers at an early age. It is said that as a child he did not show anything extraordinary on the board, and his first great rival was Mrs. Kershaw, an old woman who defeated him repeatedly accompanying each victory with laughter and mockery. Young Marion, now 14, was upset by his lack of progress in the game, and it was by chance that, while looking for a math book in the local library, he came across two books on the game of checkers. From then on, Marion alternated studying the game with her other two passions; the study of the Bible and the study of mathematics. At age 27, Tinsl...