We have two new draughts variants that have been launched today on PlayStrategy: Spanish and American/English!

Spanish Draughts (identical to Portuguese Draughts other than a cosmetic setup difference) is an 8x8 draughts variant that does not allow men to capture backwards. Full rules here: playstrategy.org/variant/portuguese

American/English is a variant known as American Checkers or English Draughts (or even 'Anglo American') depending on your location. This is also an 8x8 draughts variant which does not allow men to capture backwards. The other key rule change here is that, unlike all the other draughts variants currently on PlayStrategy, the Kings are not 'flying'. This means Kings can only move one square at a time, and cannot move any number of spaces on the diagonal they are situated on. One other difference is that Black is the starting player for this variant (all other PlayStrategy draughts variants start with white). Full rules here: playstrategy.org/variant/english

We also have some tournament news for these two new variants:

There will be Introductory tournaments for both of these variants this weekend. Introductory tournaments are 1 hour arenas, without bots, where the winner gets a unique trophy to keep on their profile forever!
- Spanish: Saturday 19th November 15:00 UTC playstrategy.org/tournament/QCpeM7nE (This will begin 15 mins after the end of the weekly Draughts Medley tournament)
- American/English: Sunday 20th November 21:00 UTC playstrategy.org/tournament/930qOH6M (This will begin 15 mins after the end of the weekly PlayStrategy Medley tournament)

Both of these variants have been added to the regular shield schedule at the following times:
- Spanish: 27th of each month at 17:00 UTC. November tournament: playstrategy.org/tournament/okxtrfVH
- American/English: 28th of each month at 17:00 UTC. November tournament: playstrategy.org/tournament/SZ9Se99q

Both of these variants will become available for selection in the Draughts Medley Shield and PlayStrategy Medley Shield from week 26 (first weekend of December).

Other updates:
- We have also finished adding new icons to all of our variants and have updated icons for Lines of Action, Scrambled Eggs, Othello, Grand Othello and Oware.
- A recent bug seen in Russian Draughts has been resolved.
- Premove for Frisian has been fixed.
- Coordinates for 8x8 draughts are now available in field number format (preferred by American/English) you can change from 'Algebraic' in your preferences.
- If Draw Tables are being used in a Draughts Swiss tournament, there is more information about which draw table and random starting position has been selected.

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As for Spanish / Portuguese variant, let me explain the different capturing rules which might be obscure for less experienced players.
There are two types of rules, which are clearly described in Spanish Wikipedia:

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damas#Damas_espa%C3%B1olas

22. Ley de la Cantidad: Es obligatorio capturar al mayor número posible de piezas.
23. Ley de la Calidad: A igual número de piezas a capturar, es obligatorio capturar a las de mayor calidad, dama antes que peón.

In English:

22. Quantity rule: it is mandatory to capture the maximum possible number of pieces.
23. Quality rule: if there is equal number of pieces to be captured, it is mandatory to capture [a sequence of] better quality pieces, [given that] king is superior to [single] draughtsman.

Therefore, QUANTITY rule is superior to QUALITY rule, and QUALITY rule is applied only when there are two valid capturing options! So, if you can capture 2 kings or 3 draughtsmen, you will have to capture 3 draughtsmen anyway. Yet, if you can capture (a) 1 king and 2 draughtsmen or (b) 2 kings and 1 draughtsman, according to quality rule, you will have to capture 2 kings and 1 draughtsman.

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Thanks @kalnap
I believe this is correct in our implementation on Spanish draughts and is detailed in our rules as:

> A player is still forced to capture when there is a capture possible and must choose the longest length capture. However, if they have a choice between multiple capture chains of the same maximum length, they must choose the one that captures the most Kings.

Some words more on Spanish / Portuguese rules.

Quote from idf64.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/rules-Damas-Classicas.pdf

When each player has made 20 king moves, without advancing any man nor doing any capture, the game ends in a draw.

Explanation:

It is not rarity that under Spanish / Portuguese rules the players can reach "4 kings vs. 2 kings" endgame, and the quoted rule decides when a game should be declared as a draw.
"4 kings vs. 2 kings" is winning for the strongest side, if the strongest side holds control over long diagonal (in chess notation, a1-h8) and one of double corner diagonals (in chess notation, g1-a7 or h2-b8).
If a player doesn't know proper winning technique and can't exchange one of kings during these 20 moves, a game should be declared as a draw.

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@kalnap Thanks for the explanation. That rule is implemented but was left out of our Rules page for Spanish. Is has now been updated: playstrategy.org/variant/portuguese

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This is great news imo. Checkers has been underserved since abstracts started getting lichess quality sites, analysis, and UI.

This is really exciting. Hopefully checkers associations take it and run with it. In the meantime I'll be directing everyone here for play.

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Thank god we’ve got English draughts but why aren’t correspondence games rated

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Correspondence games are not rated as this is what we have inherited from Lichess. Lichess have stated it is difficult to moderate correspondence games (to stop cheating) and therefore any ratings need to be handled carefully. We have a ticket in our system to update the rating categories as they are currently not consistent (e.g. different timed modes for chess vs only one rating no matter the time control for all other games).
We have not decided what rating categories we will end up with so feel free to express your preferred options - all input will be taken on board. It is likely we would have at least 2 (one for timed play and one for correspondence), with a possible option to add a third to distinguish faster games (e.g. bullet) as this is a different skill.

Great work.

Another possible implementaion is italian checkers (similar to english, but men don't capture king and there is precedence rules similar to spanish) and Malaysian checkers (spanish on 12x12).

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Lidraughts lichess do have correspondence games as rated I’ve 5 games ongoing in international and Brazilian draughts aswell as chess

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