The earliest artifact resembling a checkers board dates back to 3000 BCE and was found in the Iraqi city of Ur. While the board looks very similar to the checkers boards we have today, archeologists are not sure of the name of the game or the rules.
So, many believe that the first iteration of checkers actually dates back to 1400 BC from an Ancient Egyptian game called Alquerque. Alquerque was played on a 5x5 board with strikingly similar rules to the form of checkers we know today.
The Egyptian version of checkers, Alquerque, was well received and, for thousands of years, the popular rules didn’t change.
It wasn’t until 1100 AD that a Frenchman decided to adapt the game by playing it on a chessboard and increasing the number of pieces from 5 to 12 on each side. The new version of Alquerque was called “Ferses,” but since many women played it as a social game, it was also called “le jeu plaisant de dames.”
In the 1750s, an English mathematician, Willian Payne, created official rules for checkers in a treatise. He put in writing the practice of crowning and forced jumping which became standard practice in the 13th and 16th centuries. The game went on to be known as checkers in the United States and draughts in the United Kingdom (which it is still named).
Over time, checkers grew in popularity and in 1840 the first checkers world championship was held. Almost a century later, John Truskoski of Chicago, Illinois patented a new checkers board design. His clever design included a folding board that had recessed squares allowing players to store the chips while the board is folded. This is John Truskoski’s only known patent.
