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Draughts

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Games

                       Draughts
   International Draughts Board
   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 Enlarge
       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.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draughts"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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