Page:Collier's Cyclopedia of Commercial and Social Information.djvu/452

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RAUGHTS is a games that is very often underrated, because it is supposed that there is little or no play in it, and thus, when a person is asked if he plays draughts, his reply is not unusually, "No, it is such a stupid game; there’s no play in it."

Whenever this remark is made to us, we challenge the person to a series of games, when, having beaten him some half-dozen in succession, we prove that there must be some play in the game, or such a result would be improbable.

When playing chess, there are so many pieces, each having a different moving power and a relative value, that one oversight, caused probably by a momentary relaxation of memory, loses a game, whereas in draughts such a result is less probable, and the attention can be more completely devoted to some plot, through which the opponent does see. As a rule, a good draught-player is a more acute person on every-day subjects than is a good chess-player, and thus we strongly recommend draughts as a game likely to call into action very useful qualities. Draughts is played on the same board as is chess, the men, however, being placed entirely on squares of one color.

There are twelve men on each side, arranged on the square from 1 to 12 and from 21 and 32. The two squares marked 1 and 5, and 32 and 28, are called the double corners, and these must always be on the right hand of the player, whilst the left-hand lowest squares, 4 and 29, must always be on the left-hand side. Having arranged the men, the first move is arranged between the players by lot. 