Richard Fortman was the most prolific author in the history of draughts, as well as the game’s leading annotator since 1946, a world champion at postal play and a master player for 70 years. Bob Newell, the doyen of internet draughts editors, called him “the last of the legendary checkerists”.

Richard Lee Fortman, known as “RLF” to all enthusiasts, was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1915. At the age of 15 he was introduced to draughts — called checkers in the US — by his father, a telegraph operator who used to play the game to keep himself awake during lengthy shifts.

For a year father beat son mercilessly, but once the teenager had acquired a book from the local library — Chess & Checkers, written by the chess master Edward Lasker — and studied it assiduously, the tables were turned for good. “Using dead men’s brains” was tantamount to cheating, according to Fortman Sr, and their playing sessions came to an abrupt halt.

At that time Springfield had a thriving chess and checkers club, and under the tutelage of Harland Richards, a state champion, Fortman made rapid strides. After coming third in his first Illinois state tournament, in 1933, he performed creditably in a practice session against Edwin Hunt, a world title contender, in 1934, and established his master status in 1938 by winning the Trans-Mississippi tournament.

Playing in all 26 Illinois state tournaments, he won six, the first in 1950 and the last in 1978, and invariably came in the top four. More significantly, he made creditable showings in the masters section of the 1948 and 1958 US national tournaments, and in 1973 and 1983 he was in serious contention for inclusion in the mighty US team that slaughtered the UK and Ireland contingent in the third and fourth international matches.

Despite these achievements, he was to find greater fame as a postal player. George Bass, a renowned exponent who regularly played as many as 500 games simultaneously, was the first to make Fortman aware of its esoteric charms, in 1934, and he quickly found it invaluable for developing his analytical powers and encouraging the exploration of original lines of attack and defence.

Disappointed by a 1-0-11 draws defeat in a match for the world postal championship with Alf Huggins in 1964, Fortman persisted, and in 1986 finally attained his goal. Demonstrating the tremendous scope of this branch of the game, in which players have 72 hours to formulate their replies and access to extensive libraries, in 1990 he heavily defeated Dennis Cayton, a most worthy challenger, 9-0 and 7 draws to retain the title.

Proving that success in one field does not invariably lead to success in another, he also defeated the world crossboard champion, Derek Oldbury, 5-3 and 16 draws in a series of postal matches played around this time.

Remarkably, it was as an annotator that he was to find his true niche. He made his first contribution to the literature in 1935, and followed it with a highly valued series of monthly articles in Wood’s Checker Player in 1938-39, he established himself at the forefront of this field with his annotations to the 11th American Checker Association tournament games in 1946.

He provided annotations for a host of national tournaments staged by the American Checker Federation, several world championships, at which he was often the referee, and many of the inter-district postal tournament booklets. In 1954, 1956 and 1958 he singlehandedly annotated the postal matches between the US and Great Britain, and in 1973, 1983 and 1995 he repeated the operation for the crossboard matches contested between the US and the UK and Ireland. He also made extensive contributions to all the leading magazines of the day, including Elam’s Checker Board, California Checker Chatter, Midwest Checkers, Keystone Checker Review, the 6th District Newsletter, The Square World and English Draughts Journal.

Developing a remarkable indexing system, he managed to attain the demanding standards expected of an annotator by Oldbury: “He must be combined historian, essayist, psychologist, philosopher and prophet — and it were well he could play draughts too.” Moreover, he blended all these talents with entertaining storytelling and a capacity for relevance.

A close friendship with the celebrated Dr Marion Tinsley, one of the leading mind-sport competitors of all time, had an integral part to play in Fortman’s life, and spanned the period from 1946 until Tinsley’s death in 1995. While Tinsley “mined gold nuggets” from Fortman’s vast collection of postal games and correspondence, he benefited enormously from their extended practice sessions. Soon after one particularly bruising encounter in 1981 he went on to win an important tournament in a breeze — “After Marion, anything’s easy,” he remarked.