This popular game is known as Checkers in the United States, and Draughts in much of the rest of the world. It is a two-player game played on a board made up of 64 alternately-colored squares, eight to a side.
Here are some books to help you learn about the game of Checkers, from expert players. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced player, there's always something new to discover about this fascinating game we love.
Checkers Books
One Jump Ahead: Computer Perfection at Checkers
The new edition of this extraordinary book depicts the creation of the world champion checkers computer program, Chinook. In only two years, Chinook had become a worthy opponent to the world champion, and within four years had defeated all the world's top human players. Jonathan Schaeffer, the originator and leader of the Chinook team, details the mistakes and technical problems made and the lessons learned in the continuous effort to improve Chinook's performance, revealing the human factor behind the program's design. Schaeffer's unwaveringly honest narrative features new anecdotes, updated material and technology descriptions, and additional photos and figures, providing an engrossing account of an obsessive quest to achieve perfection in computer checkers.
Play Winning Checkers
Want to dominate the Checkerboard and astound your opponent with every move? Then you have to know how to find alternative solutions to problems, break down complex situations, and keep control of your long term strategy. And here's the best way to learn just how to do that. As you go move by move through puzzles and an entire game, you'll absorb all the tricks and techniques that turn an ordinary checkers player into a champion. Start with the basic moves that put you on the winning track. Protect your pieces, get kings and use them well, and thwart your opponent at every point. Fight for control of the center of the board. Set up multiple jumps, and avoid the "doghole."
Tricks, Traps & Shots of the Checkerboard
Champion checkers player William F. Ryan (1907-1954), known as "The Bronx Comet," provides strategies and tips for successful checkers game play in this informative book. Ryan won the American Championship in 1946, the World Championship in 1949, and the world's first blindfold tournament. Checkers is an easy game to learn, but holds its rightful place as one of the oldest and intellectually challenging board games in the world.
Win at Checkers
The book actually presents, in simple terms, a lifetime of checker experience by one of the greatest players of all time. Individual chapters discuss the basic principles of the game, experts' shots and traps, how the beginner loses, standard openings, locating your best move, the end game, opening "blitzkrieg" moves, ways to draw when you are one man less your opponent, two and three move restrictions, and the standard rules of checkers. In other words, here is a book that treats checkers as a game of skill, not just as the casual recreation or "kid's" game most people feel it is.
