Draughts

Classic board game

Gustave Courbet The Draughts Players 1844

Variants

On Little Golem is played several variants.

English Draughts

English draughts (British English) or checkers (American English; see spelling differences), also called American checkers or straight checkers, is a form of the strategy board game draughts. It is played on an 8×8 chequered board with 12 pieces per side. The pieces move and capture diagonally forward, until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are crowned and can thereafter move and capture both backward and forward.

As in all forms of draughts, English draughts is played by two opponents, alternating turns on opposite sides of the board. The pieces are traditionally black, red, or white. Enemy pieces are captured by jumping over them.

International draughts

International draughts (also called Polish draughts or international checkers) is a strategy board game for two players, one of the variants of draughts. The gameboard comprises 10×10 squares in alternating dark and light colours, of which only the 50 dark squares are used. Each player has 20 pieces, light for one player and dark for the other, at opposite sides of the board. In conventional diagrams, the board is displayed with the light pieces at the bottom; in this orientation, the lower-left corner square must be dark.

Dameo

Dameo is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Christian Freeling in 2000. It is a variant of the game draughts (or checkers) and is played on an 8×8 checkered gameboard.

Dameo is played on an 8×8 checkerboard with 18 pieces per player. Each player’s pieces are arranged so that the bottom three rows, from the perspective of the player, are filled from a1 to h1, b2 to g2, and c3 to f3, forming a distinctive trapezoid shape.

dameo

  • The player with the lighter pieces moves first. Then turns alternate.
  • The pieces, called men, can only move forward, either straight ahead or diagonally.
  • In addition, men can jump over one or more other subsequent men of the same color in a straight line forward or diagonally, provided that the square ahead of the line is free.
  • When a man reaches the last row of the opposite side of the board, it is crowned, or promoted, to a king. The king can move in 8 directions to any available number of cells, like a queen in chess. King promotion is powerful and greatly benefits the player who accomplishes it.[4][5]
  • Capturing involves jumping over enemy pieces and removing them from the board. All captures in Dameo are orthogonal only. A man may capture forwards, backwards and sideways by a short leap to an unoccupied space one square directly beyond the captured piece. If a jump is possible it must be done, even if doing so incurs a disadvantage.
  • A king may capture by a long leap to any unoccupied square opposite the captured piece, so long as there is no other piece obstructing the path of the king.
  • Multiple successive captures in a single turn must be made if, after each jump, there is an unoccupied square immediately beyond the enemy piece. One must play with the piece that can make the maximum number of captures.
  • A jumped piece is removed from the board at the end of the turn. For a multi-jump move, captured pieces are not removed during the move; they are removed only after the entire multi-jump move is complete.
  • The same piece may not be jumped more than once. A player with no valid move remaining loses. This occurs if the player has no pieces left, or if all the player’s pieces are obstructed from moving by opponent pieces.
  • A game is a draw if neither player can win the game.
  • A game is considered a draw when the same position repeats three times by the same player (not necessarily consecutively).[6]
  • Dameo has very few draws. Dameo’s draw margin at high level play is estimated to be around 21%

Last modified July 30, 2021: draughts, conhex (b35298e)