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  About International Draughts 

International Draughts originates in 8x8 Draughts, which in the US is called Checkers. Its invention is obscure, but legend has it date back to Paris, 1723, when a Polish officer supposedly laid down the rules. His name has been lost, but he did a good job. It must be added however that the Spanish (or 'Brazilian') version of Checkers, which is quite a bit older, uses the same rules on an 8x8 board, so the inventor may well have done little more than adjusting the size of the board. Anyway, the resulting game is more complicated than traditional Draughts/Checkers. It is very popular in the Netherlands, some African countries and countries of the former Soviet Union. Officially some 60 national organizations have joined the Federation Mondial du Jeu de Dames.
Draughts has a severe drawback at grandmaster level. I remember two successive worldchampionship matches between Dutch grandmasters Harm Wiersma and the late Jannes van der Wal, in which only one decision was reached in forty games.
In Draughts, one needs four kings (barring some 10.000 of over 2.500.000 three against one positions) to capture a lone king (only two under the "demotion rule" for kings, see    , but such a change of rules would hardly be accepted unanimously).

A point also capable of improvement, is the game's traditional numeric notation system. In the Arena the alternative diagonal system is employed. This alternative notation system has been suggested by the Canadian Draughts player Paul Sonier as early as 1925, and was independently developed for Bushka by .

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