|
|
|
|
| Checkers is a well-known skill and board game, which has many variants. To make it clear from the beginning there are many kinds of checkers: Chinese checkers, Halma, Russian checkers, English checkers which are called Draughts. There are also other variants, but these are the well-known ones. In this article I will present the English checkers version, but I will mention other types of checkers too. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
All the aforementioned games have something in common: they are all skill and board games. This is the only common characteristic, because the games do not have a common root, they did not emerged from the same game. A skill based game means that besides knowing the rules, a player has to develop certain skills if he wants to be a really good player. The games enter the board category because they are all played on a board with several pieces. Let us now see the rules of English checkers, called draughts in the following.
Draughts is a game which is played on an 8X8 board, with twelve pieces on each side. You can now see that draughts is a two player game. The board looks like a chess board, but not with black and white squares. The color of the squares is usually red and black. The pieces are alike those you use to play backgammon, and commercial chess games often include draughts as a secondary game, in this case you will play the game with exactly the same pieces with which you play backgammon. Although I said that the board’s dimension is 8X8, there are several variants where the board might be 10X10 or even 12X12.
The pieces usually are light and dark, but they might be even red and white. There are two classes: men and kings. The number of starting pieces is 12. The kings are differentiated by a sign, or there are two normal pieces tacked one on top of the other. The starting position is very simple. Each player puts their pieces on the dark spaces on the three closest rows to the players. The row closest to the player is the king’s row; this means that kings are placed on this row. Opposite to chess rules, the player with the dark pieces moves first. Let us now see the two ways pieces can be moved. The first way to move a piece is to slide it diagonally forwards to an adjacent unoccupied dark square. The main difference between men and kings is that kings can move backwards too. The other type of move is the jump. In this case the piece is moved adjacent to one of the opponent’s pieces to an empty square on the opponent’s side. A piece which is jumped is captured and it is removed from the board. Now you see the main goal of the game: to capture the pieces of the opponent. The rules of draughts specify that if a jumping move is possible, it must be made even if there is a non-jumping possible move. Also, a player can make multiple jumping moves, they must be made.
As I already said, there are two classes of pieces: men and kings. But there is a way in which men can be crowned to become kings, another word to crown men is to be ‘kinged’. This happens when a pieces moves to the king’s row on the opposite player’s side. After a piece is crowned, it becomes a king, and it gains the ability of moving both forwards and backwards. As I said before, the game ends when a player captures all the pieces of the opposite player, or when the opposite player cannot make any more moves.
As I promised in the introduction, let us now talk about other types of checkers too. Another well-known type of checkers is Chinese checkers. Although the names are similar, it has nothing to do with draughts. The board is quite different: it is star shaped, and it has six corners. The pieces usually are six sets of colored marbles. As you can see, the game can be played by six persons. Each player gets ten marbles, and he has to put them in the start points. A piece can move to one of the adjacent spaces or can jump over another piece. The main goal of the game is to move all your marbles to the opposite corner. There is another variation of Chinese checkers where you have to capture the opposite player’s marbles. You can capture a marble by jumping over it. For this variation, they use the same board, but they put the pieces in the hexagonal center of the board. Another variation of checkers is Halma. Its rules are very similar to Chinese checkers, but a player starts with 19 pieces, not 12 as in Chinese checkers. If Halma is played by four players, each will get 13 pieces. The goal of the game is to put all your pieces in the opposite corner, the moves are the same as in the case of Chinese checkers, but there is no capture option.
You could see that not many things are common in the three types of checkers described above. Although all are board games, some of the moves are similar, but most of them are different. Besides these three types described above, there are other types of checkers too, like Italian checkers, Spanish checkers, Canadian draughts, and International draughts. They all share the one characteristic: they are all board games, but that is all. If you would like to play checkers, you should pay attention to which type of checkers did you choose and you should carefully read the rules before you start. Also, keep in mind that checkers is also a skill based game, so be prepared that in the first games you will lose. You will have to develop some skills before you will win a game. Of course, you might win if your opponent is not a skilled player. You should aim to play against more skilled players, because this way you will be able to learn strategies and develop the necessary skills a lot faster. Good luck playing! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
