One Board, Many Draughts: The Variants the FMJD Governs

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Draughts is not one game but a family of related games that happen to share a name in English. International draughts, played on a hundred square board, is the discipline the World Draughts Championship most often refers to, but the Federation Mondiale du Jeu de Dames also sanctions separate world championships in Russian and Brazilian draughts, both played on the smaller sixty four square board familiar to American checkers players, and in Turkish draughts, which uses different starting positions and capture rules entirely.

Running parallel championships across variants rather than declaring one true version the standard reflects how draughts actually spread historically, developing distinct regional rule sets in different countries before any international body existed to standardize them. The FMJD's choice to govern all of them rather than pick a winner keeps that regional diversity alive inside a single organizing structure instead of erasing it.