Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 20:42:28 05/05/02
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I have played chess for many years, and I have recently taken an interest in draughts. I have read some basics of play, the rules, some basic endgames, etc. regarding draughts, and what I have found even in my short time of studying draughts is that draughts is immensely more tactical than chess. In draughts, you have to jump a piece if it's legal to do so. You don't have the option to decline a jump. So many moves are forced, and you can carry out very elegant combinations in this manner. A player might sacrifice 8 pieces to get his opponent setup and then in turn jump the pieces of the opponent's entire army and win the game. While probably not common in draughts, things like that happen all the time, and in chess, it's not true as much. For example, in draughts, you can play a move to leave a man 'en prise', and your opponent is forced to capture it. The next move you move another friendly piece into harms way, and your opponent is forced to capture, and you do it yet again, and again. So let's say you've sacrificed 4 men. So you are down by 4 men, but you have accomplished getting your opponent's pieces into a position where you can now jump 6 of his men in a row, gaining a 2 man advantage. There are basically two things I have noticed even at my extreme beginner level. 1) The existence of such forcing moves makes draughts much more tactical in nature. In chess, you don't have the same kind of forcing moves. You might threaten to win a piece, but it's not required that the player move that piece in response to you attacking it in chess. The only real forcing move in chess is when you check the enemy king. 2) In draughts, if you have an advantage of one king, you can win (with the exception that you are stuck in the corner). This means that if you can win 1 man, you have a winning advantage. This doesn't mean that you know how to convert the game into a win, but it is sufficient for a win. In chess things are much less clear. If you win a pawn, that doesn't mean you have a winning position. Even if you are up a rook, you might have a bad position. So because of the forcing moves, and the fact that it only takes 1 extra man to win, giving a very clear picture of things tactically, draughts is a much more tactically intense game. In chess you might have a couple of exchanging flurries, but in draughts, the possibility is always there for a huge tactical play. However, at the expert levels, just like in chess, tactics are rarely carried out. They are used like "you can't do that because then I'll take your piece with this 5 move combination". Things that the novice can't even conceive of, but the GM's use in their games, even though they never actually play the tactics. Nevertheless, this was one of the first things that I noticed when I started playing draughts. That it is much more tactical in nature than chess. Russell
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