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Continental

Draughts

also called Dames · Checkers · Damii

International draughts arrived in West Africa through French colonial contact and was taken up so thoroughly that the region now produces players of world rank, with Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire particularly strong. It is included here not as an indigenous game but as a clear case of something adopted and then made local — the board sits outside shops and bus stations across the region.

Played in: Senegal · Côte d'Ivoire · Benin · Burkina Faso · Guinea

— The board

Play against the machine. Your best score is kept in this browser only — nothing is sent to the archive.

Click or tap to play.

— What is playing against you

Two moves ahead on hard; on medium it just compares material before and after.

Searches the game tree 2 moves ahead draughts-engine.ts — evaluateD(), minimaxD()

Turns on a panel over the board listing the moves the machine considered on its last turn, the score it gave each one, and how many positions it examined to get there. The numbers are the engine's own.

On hard, ten points per captured piece plus a two-ply alpha-beta search. On medium there is no search at all — it scores a move as the change in material it produces, which makes it greedy and easy to bait. Worth noting against the tournament rules: international draughts requires you to take the longest available capture. This engine does not enforce that, so both you and it can play captures a referee would disallow.

Compare every opponent in the archive →

What this version is not

The ten-by-ten board, compulsory capture, multi-jump chains and flying kings are implemented. The rule requiring the maximum-length capture to be chosen is not enforced, so some positions permit a capture that tournament play would forbid.

— How it is played

Played on a ten-by-ten board with twenty pieces a side on the dark squares. Men move diagonally forward and capture in any diagonal direction; capturing is compulsory and the longest available capture must be taken. A man reaching the far row becomes a king, which moves and captures any distance along a diagonal.

— Sources

No sources have been attached to this entry yet. Until they are, treat everything above as provisional.

Related boards

Oware West Africa Bao East Africa Morabaraba Southern Africa
The Archive · Play as Record Draughts Africanpedia