Hello everyone,

I was wondering if Canadian Checkers / Draughts will ever be an option here? It is just international rules on a 12x12 board. Also there is 14x14 South African Draughts (Dumm) but idk if there will be demand on this site.

Thanks and have a nice day.

31

Hi harris, thanks for the request.

Unfortunately we are not intending on adding any more draughts variants any time soon, but I'll add those options onto our long list of possible games for the future.

The main reason for this is that the draughts code needs to be refactored before we extend it (i.e. add more games, support analysis board) and this will take some time.

31

By the way, I can offer you a lot of interesting games!!

It is high time for humanity to transfer the game of checkers to a large board! This will improve the performance of the game. Somewhere on the Internet they already play on boards measuring 14 by 14 and 16 by 16 ...

If you have Canadian draughts on your long list, then I ask you to add Canadian - antidraughts.

Does anyone know if there are programs for Canadian draughts and how strong they are?

21

The checkersland program for pc has Canadian checkers, as well as loads of other variants. I'm not good enough to judge the quality of the ai, but there's adjustable difficulty.

http://checkersland.com/download.jsp

I'd never heard of South African Draughts--or the Checkersland program, for that matter. Thanks for the mentions to investigate!

1

Dear fans of draughts:

let me share some information about draughts on less explored boards.
First of all, let me remind that nowadays almost all 8x8 variants are explored so deeply that titled players need to play balloted openings, because when your real life ELO becomes close to 1900, you can draw almost against any player just by playing your favourite opening line. It is why balloted openings create some complications, and only through playing balloted openings the strongest players can be revealed.
However, I am not a fan of balloted openings, because normally you have no opening choice: if you choose to create complications, you risk to commit well-hidden opening blunder.
It is why draughts on other boards are more competitive, however, there are practical difficulties.
In most of "flying king" variants, regular boards like 10x10, 12x12, 14x14 ,have very complicated multiple king endgames; besides, generally, 3 "flying kings" are not enough for trapping 1 "flying king". As well, because of board structure, there are many positions where 3 "flying kings" and 2 draughtsmen will not be sufficient for a win against 1 "flying king" and 1 draughtsman.
I respect tradition of Canadian draughts and South African "Dumm" (please, watch short movie on it youtu.be/rn8ogdgKGLc ), however these boards are better suited for other variants: with Hoogland king rule which allows to capture opponent king (but not opponent draughtsman!) horizontally or vertically; under Killer draughts rule, as well as restricted king capturing rule which is present in Argentinian, South German and Thai variants, or, better, under Frisian rules.
As for short-move king like in English or Italian variants, a game on these huge boards will result in very long endgame. It is proven that in English draughts under 8x8 board there are king endgames which requires to play at least 50 moves, but under huger boards the number of moves will naturally increase. Thus, while these boards can give good grounds for competitive play, they will not be suitable under short time control.
Just for example. One international grandmaster shared me his experience in Canadian draughts: for him, it was very boring variant, because only around move 80 (!) he was able to recognize the nature of position and what kind of complications he can create for avoiding a dead draw. So, while Canadian draughts deserve more attention, this variant will not attract titled or trained players.
If you find my opinion dubious, you can try to play yourself on this board. In fact, there is a weak (but very flexible) freeware program hwiegman.home.xs4all.nl/alfacheckers12.html which allows to play most of draughts variants on 12x12 board, including all kind of antidraughts: just change the settings according to instructions in Help section.
Let me state again, I like Frisian on 12x12 board much better than Canadian draughts, because on this board Frisian particular rules provide better dynamics, and what's more important, there is much better opening choice for white in comparison to traditional 10x10 board.
However, there are two much better boards for playing draughts, which are less explored 10x8 and 8x10.
Under these rectangular boards 3 kings can always win against 1 king, and this board size allows to combine the best ideas from 8x8 board and 10x10 board.
Spantsiretti (named in honour of Ukrainian grand master) draughts which are based on "Russian" capturing rules, are played occasionally in some club tournaments. I myself remember a draughts medley where 5 variants were played, including Spantsiretti.
If I am correct, Scottish draughts players tried 10x8 board under English rules. I myself tried English on that kind of board, and I was satisfied with it. Of course, under English rules the players will run into multiple king endgames, however, the classical patterns (like parallelogram shape position in 4 kings vs. 3 kings) remain the same.
In the light of this, let me bring a suggestion to site developers: if you can provide Capablanca chess which requires 10x8 board, the most natural step would be to adjust this board for playing draughts in most requested variants. I promise, that this adjustment will attract more draughts players, including titled ones.

1

Let me share one resource more.
There is an old MS DOS program Dynamo Draughts which allows to adjust board size for playing draughts, and it is where you can try 10x8 or 8x10 board.
Nowadays this program can be run directly via DOSBOX emulator in any popular browser: archive.org/details/DynamoDraughts_1020 .
You can adjust board size and explore this board. The engine is enough tough, but I managed to beat it many times (note: it can recognize tactical patterns and it can escape losses by creative counterplay in the endgame, but after some games many players will notice the weaknesses that it creates sometimes).

1

In a GO game, a game lasts 150 (or 200) moves. There, too, by move number 100, it becomes clear who has the advantage. None of the champions complain about this.

Time will tell which option will be popular. The creators of the site just need to add all these varieties, and the people themselves will choose what to play.

@marahonov_dima (1) the big difference is that 19x19 go is never played under shorter time control than 10' .
(2) Unfortunately, even in sites where multiple draughts variants are proposed, Canadian is not popular for the same reason that I explained above.