Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Persia. The earliest record of backgammon itself dates to 17th-century England, being descended from the 16th-century game of Irish.
Checkers, also known as draughts, is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move".
International draughts is a strategy board game for two players, one of the variants of draughts. The gameboard comprises 10×10 squares in alternating dark and light colours, of which only the 50 dark squares are used. Each player has 20 pieces, light for one player and dark for the other, at opposite sides of the board. In conventional diagrams, the board is displayed with the light pieces at the bottom; in this orientation, the lower-left corner square must be dark.
English draughts or checkers, also called straight checkers or simply draughts, is a form of the strategy board game checkers. It is played on an 8×8 checkerboard with 12 pieces per side. The pieces move and capture diagonally forward, until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are crowned and can thereafter move and capture both backward and forward.
Chinook is a computer program that plays checkers. It was developed between the years 1989 to 2007 at the University of Alberta, by a team led by Jonathan Schaeffer and consisting of Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Martin Bryant, and Norman Treloar. The program's algorithms include an opening book which is a library of opening moves from games played by checkers grandmasters; a deep search algorithm; a good move evaluation function; and an end-game database for all positions with eight pieces or fewer. All of Chinook's knowledge was programmed by its creators, rather than learned using an artificial intelligence system.
Alexander Moiseyev is a Soviet-born American draughts player. He holds the title of Grandmaster in international draughts, Russian draughts and English draughts. In this latter he was world champion in the 3-move variation from 2003 to 2013, winning five world championships, in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2009 and 2011.
Derek Oldbury was a British draughts champion from Devon. He was a rival of Marion Tinsley and, after Tinsley, "probably the second best player of all time." Oldbury was interested in Go As You Please (GAYP) draughts, a variant where players have the liberty to select their own opening moves.
Turkish draughts (Armenian: շաշկի)(Arabic: دامە)(Kurmanji: دامە) is a variant of draughts (checkers) played in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and several other locations around the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East.
Russian draughts is a variant of draughts (checkers) played in Russia and some parts of the former USSR, as well as parts of Eastern Europe and Israel.
Amangul Berdieva is an English draughts and international draughts player from Turkmenistan. She is twice women's world champion of English draughts in both 3-Move and GAYP versions.
The Draughts World Championship is the world championship in international draughts and is held every two years. In the even year following the tournament, the World Title match takes place. The men's championship began in 1885 in France and since 1948 has been organised by the World Draughts Federation (FMJD). The men's championship has had winners from the Netherlands, Canada, the Soviet Union, Senegal, Latvia, and Russia.
Lubabalo Nicholas Kondlo is a player of English draughts from South Africa. He holds the title of grandmaster, and is the current world champion in the GAYP version.
Michele Borghetti is an Italian grandmaster of international draughts, Italian draughts and English draughts. In English draughts he was world champion in both 3-move and GAYP variations.
Brazilian draughts is a variant of the strategy board game draughts. Brazilian Checkers follows the same rules and conventions as International draughts, the only differences are the smaller gameboard, and fewer checkers per player.
Poddavki, also known as Giveaway checkers, Suicide checkers, Anti-checkers or Losing draughts is a draughts (checkers) game based on the rules of Russian draughts, with the variation that a player wins if they have no legal moves on their turn, either by giving up all their pieces or having them all blocked. As in most varieties of draughts, capturing is mandatory. The game is played in Russia and some parts of the former Soviet Union.
Bashni, also known as column draughts, multi-level checkers, and rarer Chinese checkers, is a variation of draughts, known in Russia since the 19th century. The game is played according to the basic rules of Russian draughts, with the main difference being that draughts being jumped over are not removed from the playing field but are instead placed under the jumping piece . The resulting towers move across the board as one piece, obeying the status of the upper draught. When a tower is jumped over, only the upper draught is removed from it. If, as a result of the combat, the top draught changes colour, ownership of the tower passes on to the opposing player. Based on Bashni, but according to the basic rules of English draughts, world chess champion Emanuel Lasker developed the draughts game "Laska" and, in 1911, published its description. Lasker described towers that can only be "double-layered": i.e. there can be no alternation of colors. He also showed that during the game the number of game pieces either remains constant or decreases. Column draughts are a subject of interest for the mathematical Sciences: combinatorics, theory of paired zero-sum games, etc.
Sergio Scarpetta is an Italian grandmaster of English draughts and the current world champion in the 3-move version. He was world champion in the GAYP version from 2014 to 2016.
The 2017 Women's World Draughts Championship at the international draughts held in Tallinn, Estonia International Draughts Federation FMJD. Sixteen female players in total was competing in the tournament. The tournament started on October 1, 2017, and lasted on October 15, 2017. Three round played in hotel Europe, other – at Paul Keres Chess House. It played as a round-robin, with 15 rounds in total. The winning prize for the tournament is 20,000 euros. At the same time the 2017 World Draughts Championship was held.
Vitalia Doumesh is a Dutch draughts player. She won championships in the USSR and the Netherlands. Women's International grandmaster (GMIF).
Joan Caws was a British English draughts player. Caws was a multiple-times English champion, a 1979 British champion and the first Women's World champion, having successfully defended the title in 1987 and 1989.
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