The checkers revolution

Good news: Since the last game of Checkers family was added a long time ago and some of popular Checkers variants were not supported on BrainKing game site, five new games have been added today and all of them belong to this category: International Checkers, Russian Checkers, Canadian Checkers, Thai Checkers and Brazilian Checkers. I hope that checkers lovers will be occupied for a while before the rest of planned variations (Portuguese Checkers, Italian Checkers and maybe more) is completed and released a well.

Even better news: The BrainKing's Checkers model has been completely rewritten to support all possible requirements of national version extras (maximum capture rule, pawns cannot capture kings, etc.) and is currently being tested on all newly added variants. If no serious bugs are discovered, this model will be applied to all previously implemented variants too (Czech Checkers, Turkish Checkers, ...), which would solve any incorrectnesses that still remain in some game models.

And, as usual, no rules have been officially posted yet. This is a quick reference:

• International Checkers - This is one of the most widespread checkers variants in the world. The game is played on 10x10 board and each player has 20 pieces. Pawns can capture diagonally forward or backward, jumped pieces are removed from the board after the full move and it is mandatory to capture as many pieces (as one multi-jump) as possible. When a pawn reaches the last row while jumping and can jump more pieces backwards, it does not promote.


• Russian Checkers - Russian Checkers (Shashki) variant is very similar to International Checkers. It is played on 8x8 board with 12 pieces of each player, pawns can capture diagonally forward or backward and jumped pieces are removed from the board after the full move is performed. Unlike International Checkers, it is not mandatory to make the longest possible jump and if a pawn reaches the last row while jumping, it promotes to a queen and continues jumping immediately.


• Canadian Checkers - Canadian Checkers variant is identical to the International Checkers. The only difference is that the game is played on a bigger board (12x12) with 30 pieces of each player.


• Thai Checkers - This checkers variant is played on 8x8 board with only 8 pieces of each player. The rules are similar to Czech Checkers with these differences: 1) A queen can make long jumps (over more empty squares) but must land just on the next square after the captured piece. 2) A queen does not have a jumping preference (if a jump can be done with a queen and a pawn at the same time, any of these pieces can be chosen).


• Brazilian Checkers - Brazilian Checkers variant is identical to the International Checkers. The only difference is that the game is played on a smaller board (8x8) with 12 pieces of each player.