Lidraughts was founded almost 2 years ago as a platform for draughts on the 10x10 board. It was aimed first and foremost at International draughts, and offered Frisian draughts as the only variant. Several other variants have been added since those early days, but all of them on a 100 square board. To add draughts variants on an 8x8 board has been the most frequent feature request since day one. But we always felt that Lidraughts needed more maturing as a platform for International draughts, before such a step could be considered. Until now.

One can always argue when mature is mature, but the growth of Lidraughts in 2020 is readily apparent. In the last 6 months we have seen a sixfold increase in the amount of players, and in the last 3 months there have been as many games played as in the 1,5 years before that! With some much anticipated features completed, such as the v2 interface and streamer integration, we think the time has come to broaden horizons, and welcome in the 8x8 crowd. Therefore we proudly introduce the first 64 square variant: Russian draughts!

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Live draughts streams were still hard to find a couple of years ago, but more and more channels devoted to draughts are now popping up on YouTube & Twitch. You can find live coverage of events, players analysing their games and openings, streamers giving commentary while they play, and so on. To help these streamers find an audience, and to help the audience find the streamers, we have now added Twitch & YouTube integration to Lidraughts! Read on to find out what this feature has to offer, and how you can apply to be listed as a Lidraughts streamer too.

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[ Update 11-5-2020: the v2 interface is here, you are looking at it right now! ]

One year ago, big brother Lichess completed a beautiful new responsive user interface, called Lichess v2. A herculean task, that involved rewriting the html templates of every single page of the website, and rethinking all layouts with a new responsive design. As a result the new interface adapts itself to the device it is used on, so that it looks good on smartphones, tablets and PCs. Take a look on lichess.org and resize the window, you will get the idea.

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A lot has happened on lidraughts over the past few months. Many new players have found their way to the website, with the monthly amount of blitz players on its way to 2000. And in the last 2 months there have been almost as many games played on lidraughts as in the 1,5 years before that!

Despite the hardships of the COVID-19 crisis, it is beautiful to see the creativity that it also brings about in people. We've seen many draughts tournaments and other intitiatives come about from all over the world, to fill the void of all the physical events being cancelled. Anyone that has an idea they may need help with, or just wants to discuss what's possible, please send an e-mail to contact@lidraughts.org.

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The lidraughts mobile app is now available for download! The android version of the app is available in Google Play, and the version for iOs can be found in the Apple App Store. Free as usual, and open source!

Big thanks to Vincent Velociter, the main developer of the lichess mobile app. Without his open source work as a starting point, there would never have been a lidraughts app as there is today! Of course the full source code of the lidraughts app can also be found on Github.

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The first tournaments with official prizes are a fact! Stifting WFD (Worldchampionship Frisian Draughts) organizes five Frysk! Tournaments in collaboration with Lidraughts. The tournaments are all about the World Championship Frysk! and World Championship Frysk! Qualifier scheduled for March 7 and 8, 2020 in Franeker. The top three of the first four tournaments qualify for the final (fifth) tournament. The winner of the final tournament immediately qualifies for the World Championship Frysk! on March 8, while the remaining 11 finalists earn a ticket for the World Championship Qualifier on March 7. The official WC information will follow later. See also: https://frisiandraughts.com/calendar.html

Stifting WFD also made € 200,- prize money available. This amount is divided among the winners of the first four tournaments. Below you can read all information about the five tournaments.

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It's been almost a year since lidraughts.org first saw the light of day, on the 13th of august 2018. We invite all draughts lovers to celebrate with us, in the first 12-hour Lidraughts anniversary tournament! It has been a great year, with awesome people, and we hope for many more to come!

This is also a good time to reflect on what changed over the last year, because a lot has happened. Starting out with 300 puzzles, two variants, and no computer analysis, we have come a long way. Time for an overview of the developments since Lidraughts was born.

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You may have heard of Scan, the free and open source draughts engine authored by Fabien Letouzey. It is widely regarded as the strongest draughts engine around, taking first place in all recent editions of the ICGA International Draughts Computer Olympiad. It is also the engine that powers all computer play and analysis on Lidraughts, free and unlimited in true open source spirit!

There could hardly be a better occasion for the first Lidraughts blog post than the new version of Scan that has just been released! Scan 3.1 contains some enhancements that gain ELO in all variants, but its major new feature is the support for Frisian and Antidraughts. This means that Scan now knows all the variants that are available on Lidraughts!

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