About Draughts This article is about the group of board games. For other uses of draft, see Draft (disambiguation). For other uses of checkers, see Checkers (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Drought. Draughts (/ˈdrɑːfts/, British English) or checkers (American English) is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Draughts developed from alquerque. The name derives from the verb to draw or to move. The most popular forms are international draughts, played on a 10×10 board, English draughts, also called American checkers, played on an 8×8 checkerboard, Russian draughts, also played on an 8×8. There are many other variants played on an 8×8 and Canadian Checkers played on a 12×12 board. A game in international draughts Draughts (or checkers) is played by two opponents, on opposite sides of the gameboard. One player has the dark pieces; the other has the light pieces. Players alternate turns. A player may not move an opponents piece. The player with the light pieces moves first unless stated otherwise. A move consists of moving a piece diagonally to an adjacent unoccupied square. If the adjacent square contains an opponents piece, and the square immediately beyond it is vacant, the piece may be captured (and removed from the game) by jumping over it. Only the dark squares of the checkered board are used. A piece may move only diagonally into an unoccupied square. Capturing is mandatory in most official rules, although some rule variations make capturing optional when presented. In almost all variants, the player without pieces remaining, or who cannot move due to being blocked, loses the game. General Rules Men Uncrowned pieces (men) move one step diagonally forward, and capture an opponents piece by moving two consecutive steps in the same line, jumping over the piece on the first step. Multiple opposing pieces may be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece; the jumps do not need to be in the same line but may zigzag (change diagonal direction). InEnglish draughts men can capture only forward, but in international draughts and Russian draughts they may also capture (diagonally) backwards. Kings When a man reaches the crownhead or kings row (the farthest row forward), it becomes a king, and is marked by placing an additional piece on top of the first man, and acquires additional powers including the ability to move backwards (and capture backwards, in variants in which they cannot already do so). As with non-king men, a king may make successive jumps in a single turn provided that each jump captures an opponent man or king. In international draughts, kings (sometimes called flying kings) move any distance along unblocked diagonals, and may capture an opposing man any distance away by jumping to any of the unoccupied squares immediately beyond it. Since captured pieces remain on the board until the turn is complete, it is possible to reach a position in a multi-capture move where the flying king is blocked from capturing further by a piece already captured. Flying kings are not used in English draughts, in which a kings only advantage over a man is the ability to move and capture backwards as well as forwards. Naming In most non-English languages (except those that acquired the game from English speakers), draughts is calleddame, dames, damas, or a similar term that refers to ladies. The pieces are usually called men, stones, or a similar term; men promoted to kings are called dames or ladies. In these languages, the queen in chess or in card games is usually called by the same term as the kings in draughts. A case in point includes the Greek terminology, in which draughts is called ντάμα (dama), which is also one term for the queen in chess (the men are known as pawns). Invented variants • Suicide checkers (also called anti-checkers, giveaway checkers or losing draughts) is the misère version of checkers. The winner is the first player to have no legal move: that is, all of whose pieces are lost or blocked. • Les Vauriens/Mule Checkers is a checkers variant in which some pieces affect the outcome as in suicide checkers, while the rest are treated normally. • 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 World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker. • Cheskers is a variant of checkers invented by Solomon Golomb. Each player begins with a bishop and a knight (which jump with coordinates (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. • Tiers is a complex variant of checkers that allows players to upgrade their pieces beyond kings. • DaMath is a checkers variant utilizing math principles and numbered chips popular in the Philippines. • Standoff is an American checkers variant using both checkers and dice. • Philosophy shogi checkers is a variant on a 9×9 board, game ending with capturing opponents king. Invented by Inoue Enryō and described in Japanese book in 1890. • Dameo is a variant played on an 8×8 board, move and capture rules are similar to those of Armenian draughts. A special sliding move is used for moving a line of checkers similar to the movement rule in Epaminondas. ByChristian Freeling (2000). • Hexdame is a literal adaptation of international draughts to a hexagonal gameboard. By Christian Freeling (1979). • Island Checkers uses a 6×6 board, allows trapping & swapping pieces, and jumping your own. Games sometimes confused with draughts variants • Halma—a game in which pieces move in any direction and jump over any other piece (but no captures), friend or enemy, and players try to move them all into an opposite corner • Chinese checkers—based on Halma, but uses a star-shaped board divided into equilateral triangles • Konane—Hawaiian checkers History Ancient games A similar game has been played for thousands of years. A board resembling a draughts board was found in Urdating from 3000 BC. In the British Museum are specimens of ancient Egyptian checkerboards, found with their pieces in burial chambers, and the game was played by Queen Hatasu.Plato mentioned a game, πεττεια orpetteia, as being of Egyptian origin, and Homer also mentions it. The method of capture was placing two pieces either side of the opponents piece. It was said to have been played during the Trojan War. The Romans played a derivation of petteia called latrunculi, or the game of the Little Soldiers. Alquerque board and setup Alquerque Main article: Alquerque An Arabic game called Quirkat or al-qirq, with similar play to modern draughts, was played on a 5×5 board. It is mentioned in the 10th century work Kitab al-Aghani. Al qirq was also the name for the game that is now called Nine Mens Morris. Al qirq was brought to Spain by the Moors, where it became known asAlquerque, the Spanish derivation of the Arabic name. The rules are given in the 13th century book Libro de los juegos. In about 1100, probably in the south of France, the game of Alquerque was adapted using backgammon pieces on achessboard. Each piece was called a fers, the same name as the chess queen, as the move of the two pieces was the same at the time. Evolution Men in medieval clothing playing draughts The rule of crowning was used by the 13th century, as it is mentioned in the Philip Mouskats Chronique in 1243 when the game was known as Fierges, the name used for the chess queen (derived from the Persian ferz, meaning royal counsellor or vizier). The pieces became known as dames when that name was also adopted for the chess queen. The rule forcing players to take whenever possible was introduced in France in around 1535, at which point the game became known as Jeu forcé, identical to modern English draughts. The game without forced capture became known as Le jeu plaisant de dames, the precursor of international draughts. The 18th-century English author Samuel Johnson wrote a foreword to a 1756 book about draughts by William Payne, the earliest book in English about the game. Computer draughts English draughts Further information: English draughts § Computer players English draughts (American 8×8 checkers) has been the arena for several notable advances in game artificial intelligence. In the 1950s, Arthur Samuel created one of the first board game-playing programs of any kind. More recently, in 2007 scientists at the University of Alberta developed their Chinook program to the point where it is unbeatable. A brute force approach that took hundreds of computers working nearly 2 decades was used to solvethe game, showing that a game of draughts will always end in a stalemate if neither player makes a mistake. The solution is for the draughts variation called go-as-you-please (GAYP) checkers and not for the variation called three-move restriction checkers. As of December 2007, this makes English draughts the most complex game ever solved. International draughts Main article: International_draughts § Computers See also • Fanorona • List of draughts players • Solved game References • This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 1. ^ When this word is used in the UK, it is usually spelt chequers (as in Chinese chequers); see further atAmerican and British spelling differences. 2. ^ The Online Guide to Traditional Games 3. ^ Strutt, Joseph (1801). The sports and pastimes of the people of England. London. p. 255. 4. ^ The Rules of Draughts from Masters Games 5. ^ Salm and Falola, Culture and Customs of Ghana, p. 160 6. ^ [1] 7. ^ Rules of Island Checkers 8. ^ Oxland, Kevin (2004). Gameplay and design (Illustrated ed.). Pearson Education. p. 333. ISBN 978-0-321-20467-7. 9. ^ Lure of checkers. The Ellensburgh Capital. 17 February 1916. p. 1. Retrieved 2009-04-16. 10. ^ Petteia 11. ^ Austin, Roland G. (September 1940). Greek Board Games. Antiquity (University of Liverpool, England) 14: 257–271. Retrieved 16 April 2009. 12. ^ Peck, Harry Thurston (1898). Latruncŭli. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York: Harper and Brothers. Retrieved 2006-11-23. 13. ^ Berger, F (2004). From circle and square to the image of the world: a possible interpretation or some petroglyphs of merels boards. Rock Art Research 21 (1): 11–25. 14. ^ Bell, R. C. (1979). Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations I. New York City: Dover Publications. pp. 47–48. ISBN 0-486-23855-5. 15. ^ Bell, Robert Charles (1981). Board and Table Game Antiques (Illustrated ed.). Osprey Publishing,. p. 33. ISBN 0-85263-538-9. 16. ^ Chinook - World Man-Machine Checkers Champion 17. ^ Checkers Is Solved - Schaeffer et al. 317 (5844): 1518 - Science 18. ^ Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Bjornsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Muller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu and Steve Sutphen. Solving Checkers, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pp. 292-297, 2005. Distinguished Paper Prize 19. ^ Chinook - Solving Checkers Publications External links Draughts associations and federations • American Checker Federation (ACF) • American Pool Checkers Association (APCA) • Danish Draughts Federation • English Draughts Association (EDA) • European Draughts Confederation • German Draughts Association (DSV NRW) • Northwest Draughts Federation (NWDF) • Polish Draughts Federation (PDF) • Surinam Draughts Federation (SDB) • World Checkers & Draughts Federation • World Draughts Federation (FMJD) History, articles, variants, rules • The history of checkers/draughts • Jim Loys checkers pages with many links and articles. • Checkers Maven, CheckersUSA checkers books, electronic editions • The Checkers Family • Alemanni Checkers Pages • On the evolution of Draughts variants Online play • mindoku Play online draughts, russian draughts or giveaway draughts. Online tournaments every day. • Server for playing correspondence tournaments • PlayDraughts developed by the Royal Dutch Draughts Federation, dedicated to 10×10 draughts • A free program that allows you to play more than 20 kinds of draughts From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 05:23:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015