HEXDAME

Copyright (c) 1979 Christian Freeling

Hexdame is played on the following board with the following setup: 

 

TURN - On each turn, each player moves a friendly piece. Soldier - A soldier moves to a diagonally or vertically forward adjacent empty cell. If a soldier moves to one of the two farthest edges, it is promoted to a King. A soldier captures by jumping (forwards or backwards) an adjacent enemy piece, landing on the immediate next cell which must be empty.  A King slides any number of empty cells on a straight line, on any available direction. A King captures by the checkers long jumping.  Capture is mandatory and has priority over moving. Capture must be maximized, i.e., the player must perform the jumping sequence that captures most pieces (the soldier and the King count as one piece each). The captured pieces are removed only at the end of the jumping sequence. An enemy stone cannot be jumped twice during a jumping sequence. The jumping sequence must not have 180º turns. If a soldier ends its jumping sequence on one of the promotion cells, it is promoted. However, if it passes over one of those cell while on a jumping sequence, it does not promote. GOAL - Loses the player with no valid move. If a board position is repeated 3 times, the game is a draw

Freeling also notes: Those were the rules, and they are not by me. They were put down in 1723 by a Polish citizen of Paris for the 10x10 square board. His name has been lost, but he did an excellent job. I only had to apply them to the hexagonal grid under addition of the 'straight or oblique' forward movement.

An example Black's King at d1 must capture four white soldiers. Black has an option between the last two, since he cannot jump the red dot cell (it would jump the same cell twice).

There is a ZRF to play Hexdame with Zillions. You can also play and read extensive information about the game at the MindSports Arena.

There is a early hexagonal board game, from Poland (1985) called Warcaby heksagonalne. The text translate from Polish:

Most variants of checkers use square boards (8×8, 10×10, or 12×12). Rectangular boards measuring 10×8 are also encountered (Bashni – Towers; a game known in Russia). A square playing field allows the pieces to move in eight directions.

In the checkers variants we know, the rules usually permit players to move the pieces in only four directions – for example, diagonally only.

However, other variants of checkers have emerged in which the playing field is made up of regular octagons and the pieces are allowed to move in eight directions. Such checkers are called hexagonal (there are also hexagonal checkers).

Hexagonal checkers, or in other words, six-sided checkers as shown below, were proposed in 1985 by Jacek Sadowski from Szczecin.

What was the basis for the idea behind this variant of checkers, and what are the rules of the game? – this can be read in the document sent by the author entitled Hexagonal Checkers [read the English translation at the end of the pdf].