10x10 Draughts

Elgidio Hernandez Urriola from Panama has recently published a book called The Draughts Player. It presents the story of an International Draughts Game lover, who abandons his working routine for three months, to stop being an occasional player and become a Draughts Game competitor through intense training in Paris. The 125 explained illustrations of spectacular examples constitute a valuable source of knowledge that invites readers to discover unexpected plays that will enhance their creativity, attack and defense on the game board, turning them into winners of International Draughts. Its entertaining content in the form of a novel encourages readers to continue the story full of learning that will motivate them to imitate the transmission of knowledge that is developed in the conferences given by the teachers to turn the participants into apostles of International Draughts to disseminate it in their countries upon their return.

Johan Krajenbrink, the technical director of the Dutch draughts federation KNDB, has recently initiated the Krajenbrink Mind Sports Fund (KDF). The KDF provides opportunities for mind sports such as draughts, chess, and bridge, with a particular focus on draughts. The fund aims to support joint innovations in these three mind sports, promote the development of trainers, coaches, and technical directors, assist top athletes and top talents from the KNDB with NOC*NSF status, help in publishing draughts books, and enable other initiatives to promote the game of checkers/mind sports. Information about how to donate to the fund can be found in Krajenbrink-denksportfonds.pdf.

On 7 December 2024 Harm Wiersma played a spectacular game against Matheo Boxum in the Dutch team competition. During the game Wiersma discovered an extraordinary variation, but unfortunately he decided not to play it. After the game he had an email exchange with Hanco Elenbaas, who posted about it on Toernooibase. This caused a lot of speculation about what variants Wiersma was referring to. During the live analysis of the match Anikeev-Groenendijk Wiersma finally explained everything in great detail. Take a look at the truly unique variations that Wiersma managed to uncover.

A new online platform checkers.tv has been launched by Damian Reszka and Glib Ushakov. It features live comments to online games, interviews with draughts players and also an online course with world champion 2023 Yurii Anikeev. Of special interest is the interview with Anikeev in which he reflects on his recent world title match with Groenendijk. Near the end of the match Anikeev seemed to be exhausted, but after watching this interview one can easily understand why. Anikeev speaks very openly about his experiences and the events that preceded the match. This provides the viewer with unique insights into what happened behind the scenes.

In December the matches for the world title were played in Wageningen in The Netherlands. Jan Groenendijk won the men's title by beating the defending champion Yurii Anikeev with 13-11 in the games with normal time controls and 6-4 in the tie-break. The women's title was for Darya Tkachenko, who won against Viktoriya Motrichko. After the normal games had ended in 12-12, Tkachenko won the tie-break with 3-1. Take a look at some highlights of the games between Anikeev and Groenendijk and of the games games between Tkachenko and Motrichko.

In October the Amersfoort Open tournament was played. See Toernooibase for a table with the complete results. The 2024 edition was won by Anton van Berkel with 11 points in 7 rounds, followed by Alexander Shvartsman, Thomy Mbongo and Kees Romijn with 10 points. Take a look at some highlights of the games.

Between 1 and 17 september, the unofficial world championship computer draughts was organized by Krzysztof Grzelak. See Toernooibase for a table with the complete results. The tournament was won by the program Ares  (Joost Buijs) with 41 points in 30 games, followed by Moby Dam (Harm Jetten), Kingsrow (Ed Gilbert), Damage (Bert Tuyt) en Dragon Pro (Michel Grimminck) all with 40 points. Take a look at some highlights of the games. Note that the comments are in Dutch(!).

Platform Damkunst has published a booklet titled Mijn eerste scalp, written by Ton Sijbrands. It contains an extensive 100 page analysis of the game Sijbrands-Beeke that was played in 1963. Take a look at a short review of the book.

On Toernooibase Gerrit Boom shows five examples of a very practical combination idea. This idea can easily occur in classical games, but it is unclear whether anyone has ever applied it in practice. It looks like a great addition to Gerrit's book about standard combinations.