The Checkered History of Checkers
While many people around the world are familiar with the popular board game checkers, most do not know that the game dates back as far as 3000 BCE. For a better appreciation of this traditional pastime, let’s take a look at the origins of this 5,000-year-old strategy game and its journey into the 21st century.
Checkers is a two-player game in which each player moves their 12 disk-shaped pieces across the checkered squares of the game board, while “jumping” over their opponent’s pieces. The game board contains 64 squares in alternating colors (often black and red), and the game pieces are referred to as “men”; men can move only forward on black squares, meaning that they must move diagonally. However, men can become “kings” when they reach the opponent’s side and are crowned with a second disk on top. Kings can move either forward or backward (but are still limited to moving diagonally). A player wins after capturing all of their opponent’s men or blocking them from moving.
