Silence. A supporting hand to rest the heavy, thinking head on. If you could hear the machinery of the brains of the 98 draughts players who are playing simultaneously, it will be a cacophony. Now, the only thing you’ll hear can be a quick movement of a stone. A light tick on the timer. Or the soft scratching of a chair leg on the floor, because someone gets up to go for a walk.
Draughts players have gathered on the grounds of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to play at a World Cup tournament. The world of draughts (or checkers) may seem like an individual, introverted, maybe selfish world. It’s you with a board with 100 squares on it, 20 stones at your disposal. It’s between you and your opponent. But nothing could be further from the truth. Draughts players help each other. Constantly, always.
When a game is over, the players are far from done with it. In the Erasmus Café, the boards are coming up the table again, used to analyze situations which appeared in the match. It is completely normal for a draughts player, says winner and European champion Jan Groenendijk (24). “Draughts always has something fun at these kinds of tournaments. Behind the board you want to completely crush someone with your moves. If I have lost, I need ten minutes to recover and then I want to know as quickly as possible where it went wrong. I always say honestly what I was afraid of in certain situations on the board. When I was young and I lost to a grandmaster, that’s what I liked the most. Learning from the best.”
Intuition
Draughts players also play with each other in training to make each other better. Matheo Boxum is fourteen years old and, as a member of the national selection, he occasionally trains with top players such as Groenendijk. “Then I get more knowledge. I can learn, for example, not having to calculate a certain variant, but to recognize it on my intuition.”
The young Boxum comes from a real draughts family. His grandpa, his father, his brother, all draughts players. “When I was five I already watched when my father explained the rules to my older brother.” Matheo now is an international talent and travels to World Cups all over the world. “It’s not really a hobby anymore, I want to become a professional draughts player. I train at least two hours a day. Sometimes I play matches, but sometimes it’s self-study.”
That is what makes the brains of professional players different from someone who just knows the rules. Father Alex Boxum: “Draughts is an accessible game. Everyone understands how the game works, but if you want to learn the strategic intention behind certain moves to outsmart your opponent, then you have to study. Because only then you can develop a deeper insight of the game, prepare variants and predict certain situations. Draughts then rests less on chance and much more on study and good thinking.”
Jan Groenendijk wins the World Cup in Rotterdam, but he is busy with another experiment in his head. He is preparing for the World Cup in Curaçao in September and considers his victory in Rotterdam as an intermediate step. “That sounds and feels a bit strange, but the World Cup is a tournament with 19 rounds. Here I played nine rounds. I will now go straight to Nijmegen to play a ten-round tournament to simulate that. It is very attractive to think that I have now won a nice tournament – which of course I have – but in my head I have to switch. My tournament is not over yet!”