The World Of Checkers – The World’s Most Popular Board Games

Although it’s known by a number of different games, checkers is one of the world’s most popular board games. 

In Great Britain, checkers is called Draughts and in some countries the game is known as English Draughts. The game is also called American Checkers or Straight Checkers but in North America it is usually called simply Checkers. 

Much of checkers popularity rests with its simplicity. Two players face each other across a checkerboard patterned board with twenty four pieces which are usually colored black or white. At the start of the game each player gets twelve pieces of one color.

The object of a game of checkers is to remove all of the other player’s pieces from the board. This is done by jumping over the pieces as you try to move across the board. You can get an advantage by having one of your pieces crowned King which means that you can move the piece back and forth.

Checkers is played as an organized tournament game in both the United States and Great Britain. In the USA the sport is governed by the American Checker Federation and in Britain by the English Draughts Association. In tournament play checkers is governed by a three move restriction. 

Checkers was one of the first games played on a computer. The first computer program for playing checkers was written in London in the early 1950s. A second checkers program was created by IBM in 1956. 

Checkers is one of the few board games at which machines have consistently been able to beat people. Today, the developers of a checker playing computer program called Chinook claim that their program is unbeatable. In 1996 Chinook won the US National Checkers Tournament by the widest margin ever and was retired from competition.

For those who want to play a checkers board game online or video games, there are many checkers programs available. Those who favor the traditional game can find many checkers board games and pieces for sale on line.

There are a number of widely held popular misconceptions about the rules of checkers. 

* The first is that the game can end in a draw when a player has no legal move but has pieces remaining on the board. This is true in chess but not in checkers.

* The second is that the capture of a piece by a king is preceded by jumping a normal piece.

* The third is that a piece can become a king and go onto capture pieces in a the same move.

* In some checkers games pieces can be crowned by sitting them on top of each other.

* In other games the crown is painted or printed on the piece which is simply turned over.