Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Russian draughts

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Players
  
2

Random chance
  
None

Setup time
  
10–60 seconds

Skill(s) required
  
Strategy

Russian draughts

Genre(s)
  
Board game Abstract strategy game

Playing time
  
5 minutes for blitz 15 minutes for rapid 45 minutes for classic

Russian draughts (also known as Shashki or Russian shashki) is a variant of draughts (checkers) played in Russia and some parts of the former USSR, as well as parts of Eastern Europe and Israel.

Contents

Rules

As in all draughts variants, Russian draughts is played by two people, on opposite sides of a playing board, alternating moves. One player has dark pieces, and the other has light pieces. Pieces move diagonally and pieces of the opponent are captured by jumping over them.

The rules of this variant of draughts are:

  • Board. Played on a 8×8 board with alternating dark and light squares. The left down square field should be dark.
  • Starting position. Each player starts with 12 pieces on the three rows closest to their own side. The row closest to each player is called the "crownhead" or "kings row". Usually, the colors of the pieces are black and white, but possible use other colors (one dark and other light). The player with white pieces (lighter color) moves first.
  • Pieces. There are two kinds of pieces: "men" and "kings". Kings are differentiated as consisting of two normal pieces of the same color, stacked one on top of the other or by inverted pieces.
  • Men. Men move forward diagonally to an adjacent unoccupied square.
  • Kings. If a player's piece moves into the kings row on the opposing player's side of the board, that piece to be "crowned", becoming a "king" and gaining the ability to move back or forward and choose on which free square at this diagonal to stop .
  • Capture. If the adjacent square contains an opponent's piece, and the square immediately beyond it is vacant, the opponent's piece may be captured (and removed from the game) by jumping over it. Jumping can be done forward and backward. Multiple-jump moves are possible if, when the jumping piece lands, there is another piece that can be jumped. Jumping is mandatory and cannot be passed up to make a non-jumping move. When there is more than one way for a player to jump, one may choose which sequence to make, not necessarily the sequence that will result in the most amount of captures. However, one must make all the captures in that sequence. A captured piece is left on the board until all captures in a sequence have been made but cannot be jumped again (this rule also applies for the kings).
  • If a man touches the kings row during a capture and can continue a capture, it jumps backwards as a king. The player can choose where to land after the capture.
  • Winning and draws. A player with no valid move remaining loses. This is the case if the player either has no pieces left or if a player's pieces are obstructed from making a legal move by the pieces of the opponent. A game is a draw if neither opponent has the possibility to win the game. The game is considered a draw when the same position repeats itself for the third time, with the same player having the move each time. If one player proposes a draw and his opponent accepts the offer. If a player has in the party three kings (and more) against a single enemy king and his 15th move (counting from the time of establishing the correlation of forces) cannot capture enemy king.

    • Notation

    Games and positions are recorded using a special notation – algebraic notation. The vertical columns of squares are labeled from a to h. The horizontal rows of squares are numbered 1 to 8 starting from White's side of the board. Thus each square of the board has a unique identification of file letter followed by rank number.

  • Move from e3 to d4 are recorded as e3-d4.
  • Move with capture are recorded as c5:e3 (used a colon :).
    • 1. e3-d4 d6-c5 2. g3-f4?? c5:e3:g5 3. ...

    Sport

    Official rules were printed in Russia in 1884. First Russian championships was held in 1894. Next three took place in 1895, 1898 and 1901.

    In Soviet Union first championship was in 1924. From this year to 1991 have been 51 men's championship and 35 women's. Since 1992 took place championship of Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus and some other countries former USSR.

    In 1993 appeared Word championship at Russian draughts as part of World championship in draughts-64 (Russian and Brazilian variant — since 1985) under the auspices of Section-64 World Draughts Federation. Also are European championship at Russian draughts as part of European championship in draughts-64 (Russian and Brazilian) and national championships.

    Games based on main rules of Russian draughts

    There are several variants of draughts games based on main rules of Russian draughts. Amongst the most popular ones is ″Poddavki″, where a player wins if he doesn't have any legal moves on his turn (either by giving up all of his checkers or having them being blocked). Another popular variant is called "Bashni" ("Towers"), where captured pieces are not removed from the game, but placed underneath the capturing piece, forming a "tower".

    Exist invited variant with the 10×8 board (2 additional columns, labelled 'i' and 'k'). There are official championships for shashki and its variants.

    Also exist variant invented Grandmaster Vladimir Vigman in which each player have 24 pieces (two full set) — one on the white squares, second on the black. Each player play two game simultaneously: one game at white squares, other game at dark squares. Total result is sum results of both games.

    References

    Russian draughts Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA