Checkers: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|BoardStrategy board game}}

|logo_alt=checkers game|image=| image_link = File:CheckersStandard.jpg

The most popular forms of checkers in Anglophone countries are American checkers (also called [[English draughts]]), which is played on an 8×8 [[checkerboard]]; [[Russian draughts]] and [[Turkish draughts]], both on an 8x8 board; and [[International draughts]], played on a 10×10 board – with the latter widely played in many countries worldwide. There are many other variants played on 8×8 boards. [[Canadian checkers]] {{cn span|date=February 2024|and [[Malaysian/Singaporean/Malaysian checkers]] (also locally known as '''dam''')}} are played on a 12×12 board.

AfricanAmerican checkers was [[Solved game|weakly solved]] in 2007 by a team of Canadian computer scientists led by [[Jonathan Schaeffer]]. From the standard starting position, perfect play by each side would result in a draw.

Checkers is played by two opponents on opposite sides of the game board. One player has dark pieces (usually black); the other has light pieces (usually white or red). WhiteThe darker color moves first, then players alternate turns. A player cannot move the opponent's pieces. A move consists of moving a piece forward to an adjacent unoccupied square. If the adjacent square contains an opponent's piece, and the square immediately beyond it is vacant, the piece may be captured (and removed from the game) by jumping over it.

Similar games have been played for millennia.<ref name="strutt2"/> A board resembling a checkers board was found in [[Ur]] dating from 3000 BC.<ref name="gameplay2">{{cite book|last=Oxland|first=Kevin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l05TkZFbS24C|title=Gameplay and design|publisher=Pearson Education|year=2004|isbn=978-0-321-20467-7|edition=Illustrated|pages=333}}</ref> In the [[British Museum]] are specimens of [[ancient Egyptian]] checkerboards, found with their pieces in burial chambers, and the game was played by the pharaoh [[Hatshepsut]].<ref name="strutt2" /><ref name="Ellensburgh2">{{cite news|date=17 February 1916|title=Lure of checkers|pages=1|work=The Ellensburgh Capital|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yo0KAAAAIBAJ&pg=1525%2C2429787|access-date=2009-04-16}}</ref> [[Plato]] mentioned a game, πεττεία or ''petteia'', as being of Egyptian origin,<ref name="Ellensburgh2" /> and [[Homer]] also mentions it.<ref name="Ellensburgh2" /> The method of capture was placing two pieces on either side of the opponent's piece. It was said to have been played during the [[Trojan War#Ajax and a game of petteia|Trojan War]].<ref>{{cite web|date=9 December 2006|title=Petteia|url=http://www.personal.psu.edu/wxk116/roma/petteia.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061209122834/http://www.personal.psu.edu/wxk116/roma/petteia.html|archive-date=9 December 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Austin|first=Roland G.|date=September 1940|title=Greek Board Games|url=http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Austin/index.html|url-status=dead|journal=Antiquity|location=University of Liverpool, England|volume=14|issue=55|pages=257–271|doi=10.1017/S0003598X00015258|s2cid=163535077 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090408090534/http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Austin/index.html|archive-date=8 April 2009|access-date=16 April 2009}}</ref> The [[Ancient Rome|Romans]] played a derivation of petteia called ''[[Ludus latrunculorum|latrunculi]]'', or the game of the Little Soldiers. The pieces, and sporadically the game itself, were called ''calculi'' (''pebbles'').<ref name="Ellensburgh2" /><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=Peck|first=Harry Thurston|encyclopedia=Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities|title=Latruncŭli|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aentry%3Dlatrunculi&highlight=latrunculi|year=1898|publisher=Harper and Brothers|location=New York|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081008114931/https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aentry%3Dlatrunculi&highlight=latrunculi|archive-date=8 October 2008|access-date=7 August 2021}}</ref> Like the pawn in [[Chess]], [[Alquerque]] was probably derived from πεττεία and latrunculi by removing the necessity for two pieces to cooperate to capture one, although, like Ghanaian draguhts, the game could still be declared lost by a player with only one piece left.

An Arabic game called ''Quirkat'' or ''al-qirq'', with similar play to modern checkers, was played on a 5×5 board. It is mentioned in the tenth-century work [[Kitab al-Aghani]].<ref name="gameplay2" /> Al qirq was also the name for the game that is now called [[nine men's morris]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Berger|first=F|year=2004|title=From circle and square to the image of the world: a possible interpretation or some petroglyphs of merels boards|url=http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/aura/shared_files/Berger1.pdf|url-status=dead|journal=Rock Art Research|volume=21|issue=1|pages=11–25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041121040028/http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/aura/shared_files/Berger1.pdf|archive-date=21 November 2004}}</ref> Al qirq was brought to Spain by the [[Moors]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Bell|first=R. C.|title=Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations|publisher=[[Dover Publications]]|year=1979|isbn=0-486-23855-5|volume=I|location=[[New York City]]|pages=47–48|author-link=Robert Charles Bell}}</ref> where it became known as ''[[Alquerque]]'', the Spanish derivation of the Arabic name. It was maybe adapted into a derivation of ''latrunculi'', or the game of the Little Soldiers, with a leaping capture, which, like modern Argentine, German, Greek and Thai draguhts, had flying kings which had to stop on the next square after the captured piece, but pieces could only make up to three captures at once, or seven if all directions were legal. That said, even if playing al qirq inside the cells of a square grid was not already known to the Moors who brought it, which it probably was, either via playing on a [[chessboard]] (in about 1100, probably in the south of France, this was done once again using [[backgammon]] pieces,<ref name="antique3">{{cite book |last1=Bell |first1=Robert Charles |title=Board and Table Game Antiques |date=1981 |publisher=Shire Books |isbn=0-85263-538-9 |page=13 |edition=2000 |url=https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/0852635389}}</ref> thereby each piece was called a "fers", the same name as the [[Queen (chess)|chess queen]], as the move of the two pieces was the same at the time)<ref name="Murray2">{{cite book |author=Murray, H. J. R. |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofchess00murr |title=A History of Chess |publisher=Benjamin Press (originally published by Oxford University Press) |year=1913 |isbn=0-936317-01-9 |oclc=13472872 |author-link=H. J. R. Murray}}</ref> or adapting [[Seega (game)|Seega]] using jumping capture. The rules are given in the 13th-century book ''[[Libro de los juegos]]''.<ref name="gameplay2" />

|Played in [[Ghana]]. Having only a single piece remaining (man or king) loses the game. It is similar to 10x10 Czech Draughts, but has backwards capture and allows winning by removing all but one piece, similar to Latrunculi.

|Also called "Dama" or "Damas". It is played along all of the region of Mozambique. In an ending with three kings versus one king, the player with three kings must win in twelvethirteen moves or the game is a draw.