Draughts
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Games
| Draughts | |
|---|---|
 starting position on a 10×10 draughts board. |
|
| Players | 2 |
| Age range | Recommended 5 years and up. |
| Setup time | 10-60 seconds |
| Playing time | 1 minute-many days |
| Rules complexity | Low |
| Strategy depth | High |
| Random chance | None |
| Skills required | Tactics, Strategy |
Draughts (drafts or /dɹɑfʦ/) (British English) or checkers (American English) is a group of abstract strategy board games between two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over the enemy's pieces.
The most popular forms are international draughts, played on a 10×10 board, followed by English draughts, also called American checkers that is played on an 8×8 board, but there are many other variants. The game of draughts is older than the game of chess.
General rules
Draughts is played by two people, on opposite sides of a playing board, alternating moves. One player has dark pieces, and the other has light pieces. The player with the dark pieces makes the first move unless stated otherwise. Pieces move diagonally and pieces of the opponent are captured by jumping over them. The playable surface consists only of the dark squares. A piece may only move into an unoccupied square. Capturing is mandatory in some rules. A piece that is captured is removed from the board. In all variants, the player who has no pieces left or cannot move anymore has lost the game unless otherwise stated.
Uncrowned pieces ("men") move one step diagonally forwards and capture other pieces by making two steps in the same direction, jumping over the opponent's piece on the intermediate square. Multiple opposing pieces may be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece. In English draughts men can only capture forwards, but in international draughts they may also capture (diagonally) backwards.
When men reach the crownhead or kings row (the farthest row forward), they become kings, marked by placing an additional piece on top of the first, and acquire additional powers including the ability to move backwards (and capture backwards, in variants in which they cannot already do so).
In international draughts, kings can move as far as they want in diagonals like a bishop in chess. However, they cannot capture like a bishop, but jump over the captured piece, moving over as many empty fields as the player wants but jumping over only a single, opposing piece in each jump. (As with men, a king may make successive jumps in a single turn provided that each is a capture.) This rule, known as flying kings, is not used in English draughts, in which a king's only advantage over a man is the ability to move and capture backwards as well as forwards. Notice that captured pieces are removed from the board only after capturing is finished. Thus sometimes the captured but not yet removed piece obliges a king to stop after capturing at a given field where he in turn will be captured by the adversary.
Variants
National and regional standard rules
- International draughts (also called Polish draughts (polska gra in Polish because once upon a time a Pole living at the French royal court decided to enlarge the board from 8x8 to 10x10 in order to perform more spectacular capturing combinations) or international checkers) - The board size is 10×10 with 20 pieces on each side and has flying kings. Unlike in chess the playing fields are numbered just by the numbers from 1 to 50. If there are many sequences to capture, one has to capture the sequence that has the most pieces. If a man touches the kings row from a jump and it can continue to jump backwards, it has to jump backwards, but it is not kinged. It is mainly played in the Netherlands, France, some eastern European countries, some parts of Africa, some parts of the former USSR, and other European countries. This is the most popular variant of draughts, so popular that it justifies the opinion that if chess is the king of all games, then draughts is his prime minister.
The starting position of English draughts
- English draughts - Also called American checkers or "straight checkers". It is played on an 8×8 board with 12 pieces on each side. Black (the darker colour) moves first. Men (the uncrowned pieces) can only move and capture forward. When there is more than one way for a player to jump, one may choose which sequence to make, not necessarily the sequence that will result in the greatest number of captures. However, one must make all the captures in that sequence.
- Brazilian checkers - Exactly the same rules as international draughts, but it is played on an 8×8 board. It is mainly played in Brazil.
- Canadian checkers - Exactly the same rules as international draughts, but it is played on a 12×12 board with 30 pieces on each side. It is mainly played in Canada.
- Pool checkers - Exactly the same rules as Brazilian checkers but when there is more than one way for a player to jump, one may choose which sequence to make, not necessarily the sequence that will result in the greatest number of captures. However, one must make all the captures in that sequence. Another different rule between Brazilian checkers is in which black moves first, instead of white. It is mainly played in the South-Eastern states in the United States.
- Spanish checkers - Also called Spanish pool checkers. Men cannot jump backwards. Exactly the same rules as Brazilian checkers, but if there are many sequences to capture, one has to capture the sequence that has the most pieces. If there are still more sequences, one has to capture the sequence that has the most kings. The board is mirrored (the left side is flipped to the right side and vice versa). It is mainly played in some parts in South America and some Northern African countries.
- Russian checkers - Also called shashki checkers or Russian shashki checkers. Exactly the same rules as Brazilian checkers, but if a man touches the kings row from a jump and it can continue to jump backwards, it has to jump backwards as kings, not men. It is mainly played in some parts in Russia, some parts of the former USSR, and Israel. In many games at the end one adversary has three kings while the other one has just one king. In such a case the first adversary normally wins if (s)he occupies the main diagonal first and then builds the so-called Petrov's triangle.
- Italian checkers - Men cannot jump kings and men cannot jump backwards. If there are many sequences to capture, one has to capture the sequence that has the most pieces. If there are still more sequences, one has to capture with a king instead of a man. If there are still more sequences, one has to capture the sequence that has the most kings. If there are still more sequences, one has to capture the sequence that has a king first. The board is mirrored (the left side is flipped to the right side and vice versa). It is mainly played in Italy, and some Northern African countries.
- In Turkish draughts (a common form of checkers in the Middle-East, known as Dama), played on an 8×8 board, pieces move straight forward or sideways, and capture by jumping over an enemy piece. If there are many sequences to capture, one has to capture the sequence that has the most pieces. When a piece reaches the last row it promotes to a flying king (Dama) which moves like the rook in chess. Each player starts with 16 pieces on the second and third rows. It is played in Turkey,Kuwait, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and several other locations of the Middle-East, as well as the same locations as Russian checkers.
Invented variants
- Suicide checkers - Also called anti-checkers, giveaway checkers or losing draughts. The objective is the opposite of regular checkers. The winner is the first player to have no legal move: that is, all of whose pieces are lost or blocked.
- Lasca is a checkers variant on a 7×7 board, with 25 fields used. Jumped pieces are placed under the jumper, so that towers are built. Only the top piece of a jumped tower is captured. This variant was invented by Emanuel Lasker, former World Chess Champion.
- Cheskers is a variant of checkers invented by Solomon Golomb. Each player begins with a bishop and a " knight" (which jump with coördinates (3,1) rather than (2,1) so as to stay on the black squares), and men reaching the back rank promote to a bishop, knight or king.
Games sometimes confused with checkers variants
- Halma is a game in which pieces can move in any direction and jump over any other piece, friend or enemy. Pieces are not captured. Each player starts with 19 (2-player) or 13 (4-player) pieces all in one corner and tries to move them all into the opposite corner. Halma is actually very different from checkers.
- Chinese checkers is based on Halma, but uses a star-shaped board divided into triangles. Contrary to its name, this game is not of Chinese origin, nor is it based on checkers.
Computer draughts
Portable Draughts Notation is the standard format to store draughts games. Computers checkers programs, like Chinook (created in 1989), play 8×8 English draughts stronger than top living human players.
In the period of 1952– 1962 Arthur Samuel ( IBM) wrote the first draughts game-playing program. It was much weaker than is generally believed and had no chance against top human players. Nevertheless, it is a milestone in AI programming. Among other things, it was the first game-playing program to use bitboards, long before they were popular in chess programming.
The last computer world championship was played in Las Vegas, 2002, and was won by Nemesis. It beat both KingsRow and Cake. The results, after 72 games, were 69 draws, and three wins. No further computer championships have been played since then, in part because the programs have progressed to the point where probably no games would be decided any more at all.
In 1999, David B. Fogel and Kumar Chelapilla created Blondie24, a program based on neural nets that was able to play checkers without any human-imparted knowledge; however, it plays far weaker than traditional computer checkers programs.