Checkers (Cont...)

Here are more interesting stories about Checkers.

The Word Checkers Enters the Language

The name Draughts never caught on in several rural, out-of-the-way pockets of England. People there referred to the game as Checkers, after the checkered board on which the game was played. Many of the Pilgrims who set up shop in Massachusetts in the 1600s came from those areas where Draughts was known as Checkers. They not only brought the game with them when they came over on the Mayflower, they brought the name, too. Checkers spread outward from Massachusetts (many New England Indian tribes adopted the game), and wherever English was spoken, Checkers was the name.

Checkers Catches On (Slowly)

The indefatigable H.J.R. Murray dug deep into medieval European literature to document the spread of Checkers. In his History of Board Games Other Than Chess, he reports finding only five mentions of the game in the years 1200 to 1500. Four are French; one is English. (The English reference is from a poem by Chaucer, who cleverly plays up the confusion that might result in conversation if one person is talking about Chess and the other Checkers and neither knows it.)

In this period too the Church was busy banning every new game that popped up in Christendom, including Chess and almost all card and dice games. But Murray could find no such injunction leveled against Checkers. "It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the game cannot have been very widely known before 1500," he writes—certainly not outside of France, England, and perhaps Spain.
Something happened to Checkers in those years leading up to the 16th century, something that made the game much more attractive. Up until then, there were two ways to play Checkers: a) you could choose not to capture an enemy piece when the opportunity came, or b) you were compelled to capture. Compulsory captures is what makes Checkers so interesting, and by the opening of the 16th century this form of play was dominant. (Odd rules from various corners of Europe, such as checkermen not being allowed to capture Kings, had also been ditched.) Checkers then spread eastward, first into Italy (where we have a report dated 1527) and elsewhere in Europe after 1550.

The Scots Take Center-Stage

The first work in English to focus on Checkers in a serious manner appeared in 1756 (William Payne's Introduction to the Game of Draughts). From here the Scots took over the game, and, in the following hundred years, greatly expanded our knowledge of its possibilities. The Scottish influence is still seen in the names of some of the more popular opening systems, which bear the names of Scottish towns (Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow) and more fanciful notions (the Will-o-the-Wisp, the Laird & Lady, and the Ayrshire Lassie).

Given the stormy relations between England and Scotland in the years leading up to their unification, it's believed that the Scots learned the game of Checkers not from the hated English but from the Dutch (in whose armies many Scots fought in the 17th century). The Scottish Dam is certainly closer to the Dutch Damen and the French Dames than the English Draughts.

Next: Coming up next "Checkers in the Modern Era".