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Italian Draughts

#2

Italian draughts:

(1) Board orientation: single corner (long diagonal) is at the right hand;
(2) White starts a game;
(3) Particularity of Italian rules: Italian king (dama) is not to be captured by draughtsman.
For this reason:
a) weak king tricks which are known to upper intermediate and advanced English players, will fail to work in Italian draughts,
b) Italian king can be powerful against immobilized draughtsmen, and there are cases when you can sacrifice even two draughtsmen for getting a king;
c) you can't convert material superiority into a win, if you have undeveloped draughtsmen, but your opponent can restrict them with kings.
(4) Jumping rules
a) quantitative rules: majority capturing;
b) qualitative rules which are to be applied in the following order:
- a capturing with king is higher prioritized than a capturing with a draughtsman;
- if there is an alternative option, a player should apply capturing sequence where he or she can capture higher number of kings;
- if in the capturing sequence the number of kings is equal, a player must choose a capturing sequence where he or she can capture a king earlier;
Only in other cases a player is free to choose capturing sequence.

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