The Polish game is played on a board of a hundred squares, ten each way; but for all ordinary purposes the regular English board of sixty-four squares will do as well. The board is set in the usual way, with a double corner at the right hand of the players, no matter which colour be chosen.
Two great and essential differences exist between English and Polish Draughts. In the foreign game the men take backward and forward, one square at a time, as many pieces as are en prise, and the kings leap over any number of squares, wherever and whenever there is a piece to take. As, in our own game, a piece touched must be moved, and all the other rules of the English game are to be observed. On the Continent, where the game is much more common than with us, the crowned man is called a queen, just as the game itself is Damen, a game for ladies. With them, as with us, the White squares are usually chosen.
It is by exchanges that good players at Polish Draughts parry moves and prepare combinations. It is well to give man for man, or two for two. By that means the game is strengthened, and thus it often happens that a single man can confine several of his opponent’s pieces.
The lunette—the placing a man on a square between two men of the other side—is much more frequent in the Polish than in the English game. Look well to the position before you enter the lunette; and having entered it, before you decide on your move. It is often a snare, which the good player will try to avoid.
Concentrate your men towards the end of the game, for then the slightest error may be fatal.
Two, three, or more pieces may sometimes be advantageously sacrificed to obtain a king, which, in this game, is very powerful. Make your kings as soon as you can, and play them with judgment. With a king and a man against two or three kings, hesitate not to sacrifice your man, for the game may be almost as well defended by the king alone. Between equal players, the game often results in a draw; but there is no saying how numerous are the combinations which may lead to victory or its reverse.
It is not necessary to give the moves of a game, as, except for its two grand distinctions, Polish Draughts is similar to the English game.
Here, then, we have pretty well all that can be taught on paper respecting this branch of the game. The next step is How to Open a game with advantage. This I shall proceed briefly to show; and after that the excellence is to be acquired by practice alone. Draughts, in all its varieties, is an admirable game, inculcating patience, caution, tact, and scientific calculation. Those who would excel in its practice must be content to go slowly. There is no royal road to Draughts. Perseverance and failure are the parents of success.
THE OPENINGS.
Usually it is necessary to begin at the beginning; but in Draughts and Chess, as in other games of skill, players commence playing, and even attain some degree of aptness, before they actually conquer the alphabet, the science, of the several amusements. There is no great harm in this plan, however. Do we not all learn to talk before we know anything of grammar or orthography; to sing before we understand even the notation of music; to argue and discuss before we get even the haziest notion of logic? Of course we do. And then we naturally endeavour to go back to first principles, and so correct our mistakes by aid of rule and system.