This is one of the simplest, and most classic, strategy board games of all time. It was probably the first strategy game I learnt, around the same time I also was introduced to connect 4 (another simple strategy game). However, I can’t remember the last time I played it. Can you?
Playing this game was also one of the first times I beat a grow up! I know they were trying by how annoyed they looked when I beat them! They did not let me win at all. Ha!
Draughts (or if you are American: checkers) is played by two players who move pieces diagonally across a black and white checkered board. You capture your opponents pieces by jumping over them. Most games of draughts are played on a 10×10 or 8x8 board.
As you can imagine the game has been around for 1000’s of years, so me not being able to remember the last time I played it, is small fry. I expect the game has gone in and out of fashion for generations! A board resembling a draughts board was found in Ur dating from 3000 B.C.E and one was found in the burial chambers of an Egyption - Queen Hatasu.
Now-a-days of course it’s available on every format. You can play it on facebook, on computers, you could play it on the ZX spectrum when it was released, on your phone. It’s bred successfully!
In the 1950s, Arthur Samuel created one of the first board game-playing programs of any kind using Draughts and in 2007 scientists at the University of Alberta evolved their "Chinook" program up to the point where it is absolutely unbeatable! ( a challenge if ever I heard one!)
Do You Remember Draughts?
Do You Remember Draughts?