Chess… or Checkers?

Checkers pieces are men/pawns or kings. Chess has pawns, rooks, bishops, knights, queens, and kings.

They can be played on the same board, though checkers only uses the black squares.

Chess has kings, but “king me” is only used in checkers when a pawn reaches the opposite end of the board and needs to become a king.

En passant is a somewhat obscure chess move where a pawn can intercept an enemy pawn doing its two-square move.

In chess, kings can move once in any direction. Kings in checkers always move diagonally, and what makes them a king is their ability to move in all four diagonals.

Draughts is common in Britain. And sometimes checquers, I presume.

If a player can’t move in checkers, they lose.

Chess becomes a draw in 50 moves with no progress. Checkers is drawn after 40 moves.

Checkers really needs this rule to prevent constant draws.

White pieces play first in chess. Checkers usually has red and black pieces.

Zugzwang is when any move worsens one’s position. Both games feature this concept.

In checkers, if a pawn captures a piece and lands on a square where it can capture another pawn, not only can it continue capturing pieces, it must.

Pawns can move two spaces forward if they haven’t moved in the game yet. In checkers, capturing can result in double distance or much longer distances.

Magnus Carlsen made over 500K in 2021.

There is archaeological evidence of checkers in Ur circa 3000 BCE. Chess is much newer, from around 500 CE.

Checkers was probably from Ur, in ancient Sumer, present-day Iraq. Chess originated in India.

Pawns in chess can upgrade to a queen, the strongest piece, by reaching the end of the board. Checkers has this mechanic, but pawns become kings.

Supercomputers solved the over 500 billion possible games of checkers from 1989-2007. Perfect play results in a draw. Chess has not been solved—AI can calculate board states, but the possible permutations in chess is around 10^126 and likely won’t be solved for a long, long time.