Computer programs, first developed in the 1950s, have proven stronger checkers players than their human counterparts.
The game became fundamentally the same as modern checkers when the rule requiring the capture of opposing pieces was added.
Pharaonic Egyptians also played a checkers-like game called Alquerque on a five-by-five board.
English draughts/checkers is played by two people on opposite sides of a playing board, alternating moves.
At the time of the earliest Egyptian pharaohs, a popular, checkers-like game called Alquerque was played on a five-by-five board.
Later, the rules for checkers became fixed and the game found a ready pool of players in Great Britain and America.
Marion Tinsley, world checkers champion from 1955-1962 and 1975-1991, won a match against the machine in 1992.
When a rule requiring the capture of opposing pieces was added to the game, rather than making this optional, it became the same as modern checkers.
Carbon dating of a game similar to draughts/checkers discovered in an archaeological dig in the Iraqi city of Ur dates to about 3,000 B.C.E.