Richard L. Fortman, an internationally known authority on checkers, the sport of men and kings, died on Nov. 8 in Springfield, Ill. He was 93 and a lifelong resident of Springfield.

His daughter, Cindy Ponder, confirmed the death.

For seven decades Mr. Fortman was considered one of the game’s foremost players, analysts and authors. He was almost certainly the last living link to the heyday of checkers in the era before television, when men passed the time playing in barbershops and firehouses and city parks, and when high-pressure tournaments took place in smoke-filled rooms where the prevailing hush was broken only by a rhythmic click-click-clicking.

A specialist in the slow, ruminative art of checkers by mail, Mr. Fortman was a former world postal checkers champion. His series of handbooks, “Basic Checkers,” published privately in seven volumes in the 1970s and ’80’s, is widely considered the Hoyle of checkers, required reading for students of the game.

In the hands of a master checkers is no child’s play, and Mr. Fortman was quite literally a master. (Like chess players, checkers players are ranked internationally, the most extraordinary becoming masters and grandmasters.) In his prime Mr. Fortman was one of the top players in the world. He could play blindfolded. He could play 100 games at once. He won most of them.