Killer extra-light

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MLWi
Posts: 48
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:12
Real name: Mats Winther

Killer extra-light

Post by MLWi » Mon May 15, 2017 16:53

In International Draughts, three Kings against one King is seldom a win, which tends to make the game drawish in grandmaster practice. Diverse halt rules have been proposed as a remedy.

C. Freeling's killer rule is defined thus: "when a King occurs as final capture, the captor must halt behind the enemy piece". This means that two Kings will win against a lone King. Arguably, it means an overly radical departure from the standard rules. After all, one should be able to play confidently for a draw with one Man less. To fight for a draw belongs to the game. So the ideal is perhaps that three Kings against one King is a win. This is accomplished with the following halt rules.

A.K.W. Damme's sequential halt rule: "at the final capture of a series, the captor must halt behind the enemy piece". It could be argued that this reduces the power of the King too much during the middlegame.

J. Anikejev sequential halt rule ("killer light"): "When a King occurs as the final capture of a series, the captor must halt behind the enemy piece". This works fine. But it is possible to reduce the effects on middlegame King maneuvers even further, with the following proposal.

M. Winther's sequential halt rule: When two Kings occur as the final captures of a series, the captor must halt behind the enemy piece. Also here, three Kings will win against a lone King. To capture two Kings in the last two jumps is a rare occurrence, so the draughts player will hardly experience this King as essentially different than the normal.

I have implemented all these halt rules as variants in my program Draughts with Deferred Backwards Capture.

Mats Winther

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