Draughts and Dominoes and How to Play Them

By B. Scriven

The pages of this book provide, in the simplest language, hints and advice, and moves to practice to enable you to beat your friends or be able to stand up to the expert. Not only will you surprise your friends, you'll surprise yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473389038

Book preview

CYPRUS

DRAUGHTS

CHESS and draughts are both played on the same board, but beyond that they have very little in common. Chess is usually considered to be the more classic game of the two; draughts, on the other hand has probably a greater following because it is an easy game to understand. But, because it is easy to learn, it must not be thought that it lacks appeal. It is, in fact, a wonderfully fascinating game, full of variety and one that offers plenty of scope for those who take it seriously.

The Board and the Pieces.—As we have already said, draughts is played on the same board as is used for chess. There are 64 squares, half of one colour and half of another. The squares may be given any two colours; but, for the sake of simplicity, the darker colour is always spoken of as black and the lighter as white.

The board is set between the two players so that the left-hand corner consists of a black square and that the double-corner, a term described later, is on the right. To fulfil both these conditions, play must always take place on the black squares. Thus, no piece can ever stray on to the white squares.

Each of the two players has twelve pieces at the commencement of the game: these pieces are sometimes spoken of as men. They are set on the board as shown in Fig. 1.

FIG. 1.

The Board with the Pieces set ready for play. Note that a black square comes at the extreme left hand corner for both players.

The Moves.—(a) An ordinary piece moves to the square diagonally in front, either to the right or the left. These moves are shown in Fig. 2, where A represents white moving upwards and B represents black moving downwards. For these pieces there is no going backwards.

(b) In the case of a piece that has attained the dignity of a king, the moves may be to the square diagonally in front or behind, either to the right or the left. Thus, a king may move both forwards and backwards (See Fig. 2, C).

FIG. 2.

A portion of the Board showing how the Pieces may be moved. A and B are ordinary men. A is travelling up the board, B is going downwards. C is a king and it makes no difference to his possible moves whether he is black or white. The point of the arrow shows the square into which the pieces may move, as long as it is vacant.

How a King is Made.—All pieces at the outset of a game begin their career as men. However, if a man is able to travel across the board without being captured and reach the opposite back file, he becomes a king, when he has the privilege, as we have just explained, of going in any diagonal direction.

To distinguish a king from the other pieces, a captured piece of the correct colour is taken from the box and put on top of the one that has reached the back file. The king is, thus, a kind of two-decker man to look at.

Capturing Pieces.—When a piece stands on a square and there is one of the opponent’s pieces in the square diagonally in front, either to the right or the left, and the next diagonal square beyond is vacant, then the first mentioned piece may jump over the opponent, capture it, and alight in the square beyond. These three squares, it should be understood, must be in the same straight line. See Fig. 3, A. Capturing a piece consists in taking it off the board.

FIG. 3.

A Diagram of the Board showing how the Moves are made when Capturing one or more pieces. The point of the arrow shows the square in which the piece comes to rest.

If the opponent has several pieces scattered on the board with a vacant space between them, they may all be taken, since there is no rule to limit the number of captures. Such a position is shown in Fig. 3, B, where black is able to capture three white pieces. Note that at his third capture, he has a choice of two pieces. He may take which he likes, but not both.

It must be realised that a king may capture not only in a forward direction, but also in a rearward, because he has the privilege of moving ordinarily in both directions.

In the case of the capture just mentioned for B, the removal of the three opponent pieces constitutes one move. He takes them all at the same time and finishes up on the back