Checkers

One of the girls we are hosting is a checkers expert.  She has won many checkers competitions, and believe me, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of ever being able to beat her.  She’s 10 moves ahead of me at all times!  She plays international checkers, or international draughts, which has a larger board, more pieces, and some different rules than the game of checkers I played with my Grandma Jan when I was her age in second grade.  For example, when jumping, you can jump backward, and when you have a piece that has been crowned, it can move like the bishop in chess.  Tricky.

Let me tell you, after playing a few games on our normal size checkerboard, Dr. Peds express ordered an international draughts board because he was getting beat like nobody’s business (shhhhh  . . . don’t tell him I told you!) and my logical, game loving husband decided it was the fault of the board being too small for the rules of the game.  Perhaps he was right.  Occasionally he can beat our resident 8 year old checker expert.  Let me tell you . . . she’s fast.  And good.

The fun thing about the insertion of a checker expert is that suddenly have what seems like a perpetual ongoing checker game in progress.  Kids are playing kids.  Kids are playing grown ups.  Teams of people are playing teams of people (two heads are better than one).  It’s like a logic festival around here.