Hexdame

A new variant on a classic

Most people in Great Britain know the game of draughts only from their childhood. Many of them also know that the game, in several forms and under different names and rules, is virtually universal. While many of these variants are interesting enough, only two or three amount to anything more than local, or at most national, folklore. Draughts (checkers in America) is among them, as is the Russian 8x8 variant, Sjaski.

The most important, however, is international draughts, played on a 10x10 board. The game is very popular in The Netherlands, Belgium and France, several African countries and countries of the former Soviet Union.

Players are united in some 47 national federations, under the umbrella of the Federation Mondial du Jeu de Dames (FMJD), which has its headquarters in The Netherlands.

International draughts certainly looks like draughts, albeit on a bigger board. But it is in fact quite a different game in terms of both strategy and tactics. Legend has it that it was invented by a Polish officer in Paris in 1723, and this may be true. It is also true that at that time the Spanish variation already followed these very rules. International indeed.

The game differs from draughts in that capture is multidirectional and the king is long-range. This provides for absolutely stunning combinatorial possibilities. In that light calling the game draughts is a sorry circumstance: it suggests far more similarity than is actually the case.

That is why I use the name "Dame", in line with the Dutch Dammen, the German Dame and the French Jeu de Dames.

HexDame is not a new game; the rules are exactly the same as the square game's: only the board, with its more complicated honeycomb grid, is different.

Already HexDame equals, if not surpasses, its ancestor's tactics. Its margin for draws is substantially smaller, not only because strategical concepts, quite different from Dame's, are still in their infancy, leading to bigger errors, but also because less material is needed in the endgame to force a win.

The game is supported by the FMJD, and the current world champion, Leo Springer, is himself a draughts player of excellent repute, and indeed that game's foremost endgame authority.

CHRISTIAN FREELING. The author is the inventor of HexDame (0031 53 431 5320)