Why draughts? Because it's more than just a game.

Draughts is one of the oldest strategy games in the world – its origins date back to ancient Egypt, and its rules were already known in the Middle Ages. For centuries, it has accompanied people as a source of entertainment, but also as a school of logical thinking, patience and planning several steps ahead.

For children, draughts is a great mental exercise: it teaches observation, concentration and decision-making. For older people, it is a great way to stimulate memory and cognitive flexibility. And for everyone, it is an opportunity to enjoy a quiet, analogue moment in a world full of digital stimuli.

Why doesn't the computer play like a world champion?

Our first version of this game was posted online around 2002 as entertainment on the website of a restaurant in Szczecin. You could say it's an archaeological find. The only original versions have been preserved in Wayback Machine. It is difficult to find something in private archives that was created over 20 years ago. So it was, more or less, a few million lines of code ago.

It turned out that the original code, from that long-gone programming era, still works efficiently. Of course, a thorough renovation was carried out to adapt the code to modern times, but all the assumptions of movement logic, computer responses and even simple graphics were preserved. Although back then the graphics were .gif files, and today they are css rules. We deliberately decided not to use advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, minimaxes or alpha-beta pruning. Why? Because this is not about fighting an unbeatable machine, but about real play.

The computer in this version does not think ten moves ahead. What is more, it does not think at all. It only considers the simplest possible moves. Sometimes it makes mistakes, sometimes it does not take advantage of the best opportunity – because that is how it is in the real world: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You won't always take the best opportunity. And was it really the best one? That's where the joy of the game lies – not in dominating, but in spending time together, in the tension before a move, in the joy of a small victory.

Play for fun. For the child that still lives within you. Or for the child who is just discovering that the world can be conquered after all – even if only on a draughts board.