World Series Conker Competition 2000 (S.E. Division)
The competition, under WCC rules, was held during the Wadard
Morris Men's Winter Ale at the Village Hall, Farningham, Kent, England on
the 25th November 2000. There were some 60-odd competitors and the
event was held as heats, semi-final and final during breaks in the
evening's other activities.
The competition was won eventually by
Danny Betts, from Green Oak MM.
For more pictures of the event
click here.
The game of Conkers
For foreign visitors to our web-site, some explanation of
the 'Conker Competition' may be in order. The game is
normally played by school-boys using conkers,
horse-chestnuts, threaded on lengths of string. One
contestant suspends his conker from one hand while the other
contestant attempts, by swinging his conker, to break
the other with a single blow. If he succeeds, he wins
the contest. If not the positions are reversed and
the first contestant attempt to break his opponent's
conker. The positions are repeatedly reversed until
there is an outcome. As I remember playing the game, for each
conker a count was kept of the number of wins that it
had made. Thus one conker was said to be a two-er if
it had notionally two wins, and a six-er if it had had
six wins. However a curious and somewhat irrational
scoring mechanism pertained. A winning conker was credited
with the wins of its defeated opponent. A two-er, defeating
a six-er became a nine-er. In an effort to prolong the
life of his conkers a player would try pickling them in
vinegar, baking them in an oven and various other
'secret' methods.
Under WCC (Wadard Conker Club) rules the game is
a knock-out contest.
According to the Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary the game was played originally with
snail shells. This provides the origin of the name.
'conker' is a dialect name for a snail shell, probably
related to 'conch' which comes from the French and Latin.