Killer draughts is a variant of Dame (International Draughts). The only difference is the
following: if the last captured piece is a Dame, the Dame captor must stop at the immediate next cell after the last
jumped piece. This serves to reduce the drawishness of the game, since it means that two Dames will win against
a lone Dame.
The object is to capture all your opponent’s men by jumping over them, or
stalemate the opponent so he has no moves. A Man can move
forward, by sliding diagonally to an adjacent empty square. It
may also jump over an enemy piece in any direction to a
vacant square on the other side. Jumping over a piece captures it.
Capturing is
mandatory, and you must keep jumping and capturing as long as it is possible.
You must even choose beforehand the series of jumps that captures the most men.
When your Man reaches the other end of the board, it becomes a Dame and can
then move and capture forwards and backwards over any distance. It also
jumps to capture, but only one Man at a time. A Dame must also choose the line that
captures the most men. If a Man reaches the promotion square as part of a capture sequence, it does not promote.
The variant was invented by Christian Freeling. Tjalling Goedemoed has written a course in Killer Draughts, downloadable here. See also Modern Draughts.
Killer Draughts (8x8) is played on an 8x8 board with 12 pieces per player. The only difference from Brazilian Checkers (Minor Polish draughts) is the following: the Dame must stop on the first vacant square after the last captured piece, if and only if that piece is also a Dame. Minor Polish draughts was known already in the 16th century, and possibly even earlier. It was a popular board game in Holland, especially in Amsterdam.
References
Mindsports: Killer draughts
10x10 Draughts: Killer draughts: classical 10x10 positions
See also:
Winther, M. (2015). ‘International/Polish Checkers Variants’. (here)
-------- (2017). ‘Spanish Checkers Variants’. (here)
-------- (2017). ‘Gothic Checkers Variants’. (here)
☛ You can download my free Killer Draughts program here (updated 2020-10-13), but you must own the software Zillions of Games to be able to run it. (I recommend the download version.)
© M. Winther, 2015.
