Checkers Showdowns: A Guide To The World’s Top Tournaments

Researchers believe the game of checkers dates back to 3,000 BC to the city of Ur in Iraq, one of the first human settlements. Players used clay playing boards and crude stone pieces to outwit their opponents.

Today, the materials have changed, but the basic concept remains the same. Use the rules of checkers to take all your opponent’s pieces and win.

People often view checkers as a simple version of chess, but the game is surprisingly complicated. While it might not have specialist pieces, it still requires a high degree of strategy and calculation to win.

As you might expect, various checkers tournaments arose throughout modern history. Players wanted to test their mettle against each other and see who was the best checkers master in the world.

This post runs through some of these championships. We cover all the big ones, so you know where to look to watch the pros in action.

World Checkers/Draughts Championship

The biggest checkers tournament in the world is the World Checkers/Draughts Championship. The community sees players who win this tournament as being the best of the best. Dozens of competitors vie for supremacy every year.

The World Checkers/Draughts Championship held its first men’s tournament in 1840. Women started competing over a hundred years later, in 1986. Winners from Scotland and the United States dominated the game for the first century and a half, with England being the only other nationality winning any titles.

After the 1994 championships, the World Checkers/Draughts Federation changed the rules. Initially, all games were “Go As You Please” (GAYP), where players start with pieces in their original positions. Later, the organization added a parallel 3-move variant of the game where players start three moves in. The purpose of this change was to add an element of randomness to the game and prevent matches from going through the same set of plays every time.

With the rule changes, the World Checkers/Draughts Championship became more international, with players from Barbados, Italy, South Africa, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine all winning titles. The current reigning champions in the men’s game are Italians Sergio Scarpetta in the 3-move category and Matteo Bernini in the GAYP category. Ukrainians Nadiya Chyzhevska and Tetiana Zaitseva are women’s champions in the GAYP and 3-move categories, respectively.

The World Checkers/Draughts Championship operated independently until the formation of the World Draughts Federation. The international body brought together four existing national draughts federations in Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, and France. Since then, the organization has grown significantly to include nations from all continents. Also called the FMJD (based on its original French name, Fédération Mondiale du Jeu de Dames), the international ruling body is aiming to use the world championships as a means to raise checkers’ status and get the International Olympic Committee to recognize it formally as an Olympic sport.

To achieve this, the FMJD joined two significant associations in recent decades: the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) and the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA). These partnerships are attempts to raise the profile of the game of checkers and get the international community more interested in it.

Draught World Championships

To confuse matters slightly, the FMJD also administers a tournament called the Draught World Championships, with the first men’s tournament held in 1885. Like the World Checkers/Draughts Championship, the Draught World Championships occur every two years.

The championship’s first venue was in France and remained there for much of the 19th century. The FMJD took over in 1948 and began standardizing procedures and modernizing the event.

Numerous countries fielded winners in the men’s tournament, including the Netherlands, Canada, Russia (and the former Soviet Union), Senegal, and Latvia. Between 1948 and 1956, the Netherlands held all the biennial tournaments. Then, the baton passed to the Soviet Union and Italy before returning to the Netherlands during the 1970s. In the 1980s, Brazil hosted a tournament, while Russia and the Netherlands continued to dominate in the following decades.

The FMJD considers Draught World Championship winners before 1948 “unofficial” because it did not oversee tournaments. The first of these was Anatole Dussaut, who won in 1885, known for his Le Gambit Dussaut, a strategy he used to defeat his opponents. Other famous players who unofficially won multiple tournaments include Louis Barteling, the almost unbeatable Isidore Weiss, Alfred Molimard, Maurice Reichenbach, and Pierre Ghestem, all of whom were from France.

Every year, the tournament awards a Gold (1st place) winner, a Silver (2nd place) runner-up, and a Bronze (3rd place) runner-up. Some of the most notorious winners of the tournament include Piet Roozenburg, who won four times in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the Russian Iser Kuperman, who won repeatedly in the 1950s and beyond.

The World Draught Championships are only held in odd years. In even years, a “World Title Match” takes place where the former champion and new champion qualify for the world title match. If the former champion retains his title in the tournament, the runner-up can challenge him the following year. This approach keeps the sport interesting and means there is a major match-up every year.

Interestingly, the players who compete in the Draughts World Championship differ considerably from those in the World Checkers/Draughts Championship. This situation reflects the fact that the checkers community is still struggling to unify. Most players are only willing to travel to their local tournaments, not fly across the world (unless they think they have a high chance of winning).

In 1998, the Draughts World Championship introduced a variation on the classic game called Blitz and formed a separate tournament for players wanting to compete, the first of which was in the Hague, with following meets in London, Tel Aviv, Lille, Izmir, and Riga. The term “Blitz” comes from the idea of time control. Players must complete all their moves in 5 minutes, gaining an additional 5 seconds per move. If the timer runs out, the player forfeits the game.

In 2014, the FMJD added another version of the game called “Rapid” with a different time limit. Under this format, players get 15 minutes of starting time to complete their moves and gain five additional seconds per move.

These arrangements ensured that players would play games faster. Organizers wanted to bring some urgency back into the game of checkers and make it more of an observer sport. It also changed the type of winning players. Eastern European masters began having a more significant impact at the top tiers of the game, with Ukrainians picking up more medals as the years wore on.

Women’s Draughts World Championship

The Women’s Draughts World Championship is a women-only tournament by the FMJD. Like the Draughts World Championship, it only occurs every two years on odd years, with a “World Title Match” following on the next even year.

Organizers arranged the first Women’s Draught World Championship in 1973 in the Netherlands to run in parallel with the men’s draughts tournaments. For the first decade and a half of the competition, the Soviet Union dominated, with Russians taking first and second place until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. After that, other countries started to gain more traction. However, the women’s game remained strongest in Eastern Europe. To date, no players outside of this region have ever won the tournament.

The tournament travels widely to different countries. For instance, in 2013, players battled it out in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of landlocked Mongolia. The following year, classic tournament players traveled to the small and peaceful town of Zerendi in Kazakhstan. In 2015, players went to Wuhan City in Hubei Province, China. And in 2023, they went to Willemstad in Curacao in the southern Caribbean Sea.

Like the Draughts World Championship, the Women’s Draughts World Championship now includes Blitz and Rapid sub-competitions in addition to classic checkers. The first Blitz tournament was in 1999, with Rapid following in 2012. The rules remained the same as in the World Draughts Championship. Blitz says that players have 5 minutes to make all their moves, plus five seconds for each turn. Rapid says they have 15 minutes to make all their moves and get an extra five seconds for each turn.

The rights to the World Title Match are also the same as in the Draughts World Championship. The runner-up has the right to challenge the existing champion on even-dated years following the previous winner’s retention of their title. This setup keeps the sport interesting and gives fans something to look forward to every year. The third-place player does not have this right.

Draughts-64 World Championship

The Draughts-64 World Championship is yet another international competition organized by the FMJD. The organization set it up in 1985 for Brazilian and Russian draughts players (two countries keen on the game).

The tournament’s location oscillates between Russia and Brazil. It took place in various Brazilian cities in 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1993, including San Lorenzo and Aguas de Lindoia. Then, as Russia recovered from the Soviet Era, the FMJD began organizing tournaments in both countries in the same year. This setup meant that there would be two winners in any given year.

The Draughts-64 World Championships was one of the first to start offering Blitz and Rapid versions of the game in addition to classic play. Blitz began in 1993 at the tournament in Aguas de Lindoia, while Rapid started in 1998 in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, in Russia’s sphere of influence.

As such, many keen checkers players consider the Draughts-64 Championships ahead of their time. Like Queens in tennis, the tournament might not be as high profile as the Grand Slams, but it tends to attract the connoisseurs of the game – people who want to watch high-stakes, fast-paced action on the checkers table.

World Youth Draughts Championships

The FMJD also oversees the World Youth Draughts Championships, held on an official basis since 1972. The tournament splits players by age and gender. Organizers arrange competitions for boys and girls under 10, 13, 16, and 19, respectively. It also holds Blitz games where children compete with each other and the clock.

Draughts African Championship

The Draughts African Championship is a regional checkers championship organized by the FMJD and the African Draughts Confederation (CAJD). The top-ranking three or four players from the tournament gain automatic entry into the Draughts World Championship. The tournament attracts significant attention because it provides insight into the up-and-coming stars fans can expect to see more in future seasons.

The first championship took place in Dakar, Senegal in 1980. In 1982, it moved to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast before returning to Dakar two years later. In 1988 and 1990, the Republic of Mali hosted the tournament in the city of Bamako before it returned to Abidjan in 1992 and Dakar in 1994,

Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Cameroon are the epicenters of checkers in Africa, with these countries producing the most champions. For example, Senegalese player Macodou Ndiaye dominated the sport throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, dispatching one African player after another in his search for dominance. From 2012 onwards, Ivory Coast player Ncho Joel Atse has led the field, with notable challenges from the Democratic Republic of the Congo star Freddy Loko and Senegalese player NDiaga Samb.

The Draughts African Championship introduced Blitz in 2014 and held tournaments every even year except 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also hosted the first women’s tournament in 2018, won by Senegalese woman Biagne Elsa Negbre.

Draughts European Championship

The Draughts European Championship is another regional checkers tournament organized by the ever-present FMJD. The ruling body hosted the first event in 1965, bringing together the best players on the continent.

The format of the tournament changed dramatically over the years. The first meet was a round-robin, but the FMJD tried other structures, including playoffs and the Swiss system. Ultimately, the latter won out in 2006, and organizers used it in all subsequent tournaments.

Blitz arrived in the Draughts European Championship in 2005 under the Swiss system with the hosting of the event in Prague. Rapid came later in 2012 with the competition held in Tallinn, Estonia. The European tournament also introduced Superblitz in 2016, where players only get three minutes on the clock instead of the usual five.

Over the years, the FMJD has tried to make the Draughts European Championship as cosmopolitan as possible. Historical cities hosting the tournament include Bolzano and Livorno in Italy, Sukhumi and Izmir in Turkey, Pathenay in France, Zakopane in Poland, and Kortrijk in Belgium.

Interestingly, the European checkers scene doesn’t have any dominant players. The last competitor to win consecutive titles was Ton Sijbrands from the Netherlands in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then, players like Alexander Georgiev and Alexei Chizhov have tried to form winning streaks but have failed.

Panamerican Draughts Championships

The Panamerican Draughts Championship is another international regional draughts championship held every two years. Like the Draughts African Championship, the top two or three players automatically qualify for the Draughts World Championship.

The FMJD set up the first championship in 1980 in Paramaribo, Suriname. Since then, the tournament has been held across North and South America, including Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Amparo, Brazil, Montréal, Canada, and Philadelphia, United States.

During the 1980s, American Iser Kuperman dominated the sport, winning three titles before returning in 1995 to win a fourth. Following his era, numerous players vied for supremacy, including Johan Koster, but none could dominate. However, in 2011, Brazilian Allan Silva burst onto the scene and picked up four consecutive titles in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2016.

The Panamerican Draughts Championship was a little late to the Blitz scene, with the first timed tournament held in 2022. It was also late to introduce a women’s competition in 2018. The first women’s winner was Lublyana Turiy from the United States.

Asian Draughts Championship

Finally, the FMJD organizes the Asian Draughts Championship, with the top players from the regional tournament securing their places automatically at the World Championship finals.

The Asian Draughts Federation organized the first tournament in Nebit Dag in Turkmenistan in 1995. The event was small-scale and only attracted a limited number of players. However, in subsequent years, it grew into a more multinational affair.

The second tournament came four years later, this time in the Mongolian city of Ulaanbaatar. Six players from four countries competed.

The third tournament was in 2001, where 30 players from eight countries battled it out for checkers supremacy. Since then, the tournament has grown substantially. The 2019 tournament in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, attracted over 307 players from eight countries in the region.

Conclusion

So, there you have it: the world’s biggest checkers tournaments. As you can see, the size and popularity of various competitions continue to grow over time. Checkers might be a minor sport compared to chess, but it is still gaining popularity, with tournaments trying new formats and ideas to attract new players and fans. Plus, it is a truly international sport, with players competing all over the world.

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