Draughts

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Draughts, a group of two-player zero-sum and perfect information abstract strategy board games which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. The most popular forms are international draughts, also called Polish draughts, played on a 10×10 board and topic of this page, and 8x8 Checkers.

=International Draughts= The starting position of international draughts has 20 men each placed on its home squares of the 50 relevant dark squares. If a men land on the opponent back rank, it promotes to a king. Men can move diagonally forward, and in international draughts capture forward and backward by moving two consecutive steps in the same line, jumping over the piece on the first step. Multiple opposing pieces may be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece. The jumps do not need to be in the same line but may "zigzag". In international draughts, kings (sometimes called flying kings) move any distance along unblocked diagonals, and may capture an opposing man any distance away by jumping to any of the unoccupied squares immediately beyond it. Since captured pieces remain on the board until the turn is complete, it is possible to reach a position in a multi-capture move where the flying king is blocked from capturing further by a piece already captured.

=Computer Draughts= 10x10 Computer Draughts is regular played at the Computer Olympiad. Some (former) chess programmers were or are also active in Computer Draughts, such as Ard van Bergen, Joost Buijs, Eric van Riet Paap, Vincent Diepeveen, Gijsbert Wiesenekker, and Fabien Letouzey. The 18th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2015 had 12 participants, a gained some interests in the computer chess comunity also because Fabien Letouzey participated with his new Draughts program Scan, and even won the tournament. Computer Draughts is a bitboard friendly game, three (all, kings, white) or four bitboards are sufficient to represent the board. In his program Fabien applies his Blockers and Beyond like technique to generate king moves.

=Computer Olympiads=
 * 1st Computer Olympiad, London 1989
 * 3rd Computer Olympiad, Maastricht 1991
 * 4th Computer Olympiad, London 1992
 * 7th Computer Olympiad, Maastricht 2002
 * 8th Computer Olympiad, Graz 2003
 * 11th Computer Olympiad, Turin 2006
 * 12th Computer Olympiad, Amsterdam 2007
 * 13th Computer Olympiad, Beijing 2008
 * 14th Computer Olympiad, Pamplona 2009
 * 15th Computer Olympiad, Kanazawa 2010
 * 16th Computer Olympiad, Tilburg 2011
 * 17th Computer Olympiad, Yokohama 2013
 * 18th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2015
 * 19th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2016
 * 20th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2017

=Photos=

Yokohama 2013
17th Computer Olympiad, Yokohama 2013, Andrew Lin, Ton Tillemans (Gold) and Tornado operator

Leiden 2015
18th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2015, Bert Tuyt, Fabien Letouzey, Ron Van Bemmelen, TD Jaap Bus

=Publications=

1989

 * Derek Oldbury (1989). AI (Any Interest) for Draughts? Heuristic Programming in AI 1
 * John Smeets, Gerard Putter (1989). Some Experience with a Self-Learning Computer Program for Playing Draughts. Heuristic Programming in AI 1

2000 ...

 * Jaap Bus (2002). Dam 2.2 wins Draughts tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 » 7th Computer Olympiad
 * Ton Tillemans (2003). Sjende Blyn wins Draughts tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 » 8th Computer Olympiad

2005 ...

 * Ton Tillemans (2006). TDKing wins the Draughts 10x10 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 » 11th Computer Olympiad
 * Ton Tillemans (2007). Dam 2.2 wins Draughts tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 » 12th Computer Olympiad
 * Ton Tillemans (2008). TDKing wins Draughts tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 » 13th Computer Olympiad

2010 ...

 * Ton Tillemans (2010). TDKing wins Draughts Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4 » 15th Computer Olympiad
 * Jan-Jaap van Horssen (2012). Schwarzman vs. MAXIMUS: A Man-Machine Match in International Draughts. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2, pdf
 * Jan-Jaap van Horssen (2012). Schwarzman vs. MAXIMUS: Games 5 and 6 annotated. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3
 * Jan-Jaap van Horssen (2013). The 27th Dutch Open Computer Rapid-Draughts Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 4

2015 ...

 * Jaap Bus (2015). SCAN wins Draughts Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4 » 18th Computer Olympiad | Draughts
 * Jan-Jaap van Horssen (2018). Complexity of checkers and draughts on different board sizes. ICGA Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4

=Forum Posts=

2010 ...

 * (Free) draughts software by A. Presman, World Draughts Forum, April 21, 2012
 * Draughts at the ICGA Olympiad by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, April 30, 2015
 * Re: Draughts at the ICGA Olympiad by Fabien Letouzey, CCC, April 30, 2015


 * Computer Olympiad 2015 Leiden by Bert Tuyt, World Draughts Forum, May 01, 2015
 * A little more info about Scan by Fabien Letouzey by Jesús Muñoz, CCC, July 06, 2015
 * Scan by Fabien Letouzey, World Draughts Forum, July 08, 2015
 * Registration for the 2016 ICGA Computer Olympiad by Jan-Jaap van Horssen, World Draughts Forum, February 29, 2016
 * Complexity of Checkers and Draughts on board sizes 6x6/8x8/10x10/12x12/14x14 by Jan-Jaap van Horssen, World Draughts Forum, August 13, 2017

2020 ...

 * NNUE by Bert Tuyt, World Draughts Forum, August 19, 2020 » NNUE
 * Learning draughts evaluation functions using Keras/TensorFlow by Rein Halbersma, World Draughts Forum, November 30, 2020 » Neural Networks

=External Links=
 * Draughts from Wikipedia
 * International draughts from Wikipedia
 * 10x10 Draughts
 * Alldraughts!
 * Portable Draughts Notation (PDN) from Wikipedia
 * PDN 3.0 standard 1.0 documentation

Computer Draughts

 * International draughts Computers - Wikipedia
 * Computerdammen by Frank Mesander
 * ELO rating computer draughts / computerdammen by Frank Mesander


 * Draughts (ICGA Tournaments)
 * DCTL: Draughts and Checkers Template Library by Rein Halbersma

Draughts Programs

 * All 10x10 programs in the world
 * Buggy by Nicolas Guibert
 * Dam by Harm Jetten
 * Damage by Bert Tuyt
 * Dragon draughts by Michel Grimminck
 * Dynamo Draughts by Adrian Millett
 * Kingsrow International by Ed Gilbert
 * Maximus by Jan-Jaap van Horssen
 * Maximus for Android


 * Scan by Fabien Letouzey
 * Tornado by Frank Mesander
 * Truus by Stef Keetman

=References= Up one Level