Are you sick of checkers pretending to be anything like chess?  From its turn based nature, to the standoff between two colours to the emergence of "Kings" in the "endgame" to the, well, lets be frank:  The the outright theft of the chess board.

When you really think about it, it's quite the waste that checkers only uses 32 of the 64 squares that the chess-board has to offer (not to mention only 12 peices per side).  I think that our board should be reserved for those that are going to use it to its fullest potential, and that kids games should be played on, well, a kids board.

With that in mind, I thought it was time that checkers got its own board. Something that was intuitive with respect to the rules of the game, but that wasn't basically 50% waste.  With that, I present, checkers' revised game board:

Consider it a free gift to checkers players everywhere.

Now: hands off our board.

I'm sure once you got use to it it would be about the same, this board would be smaller by half though.

"Checkers is for tramps." - attributed to Paul Morphy.

Yeah it seems silly to play checkers on the same board as chess when you only use half the squares.

Checkers is older than chess, so checkers had the board first.

Sorry, I thought you were talking to Nixon's dog.  My bad.

 @ woodshover

History of Checkers or Draughts

Checkers or Draughts, as it is known in Great Britain, has ancient roots. It is thought that the earliest form of checkers was a game discovered in an archeological dig at Ur in Iraq. Carbon dating makes it appear that this game was played around 3000 B.C. However, the game used a slightly different board, a different number of pieces and no one is quite certain of the exact rules.

In ancient Egypt a game called Alquerque, which had a 5X5 board was a common and much played game. Historians have traced it as far back as 1400 B.C. It was a game of such popularity that it was played all over the western world for thousands of years.

Around 1100 a Frenchman got the idea of playing the game on a chess board. This meant expanding the number of pieces to 12 on a side. It was then called "Fierges" or "Ferses". It was soon found that making jumps mandatory made the game more challenging. The French called this version "Jeu Force". The older version was considered more of a social game for women and was called "Le Jeu Plaisant De Dames".

 Is there a reason why checkers couldn't be played on a six by six board?

Probably because it's simple enough on OUR board...never mind a smaller one LOL

Maybe they should get a 10x10 board, or wait, maybe a 64x64 board would make it interesting.

TheGrobe

That second one got me laughing.  Thanks!

 Maybe the board should be so big you have to drive for three hours to get to the next square. With a trillion squares to a side.

@ TheGrobe

LOLOL

You don't play checkers on a chess board. The light squares are not part of a checkers board.

.....So does your checkers board have hollow spaces? Interesting. Never seen one of those yet.

Interesting. In Brazil the jumps are also mandatory but the name of the game is still Damas (Portuguese for ladies).

I see Canadian and Malaysian draughts are played on a 12x12 board

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draughts

ps checkers is called draughts here in South Africa (and almost everywhere else that English is spoken, except the USA)

Then how come the chessboard I bought came with checkers too?