In conventional diagrams, the board is displayed with the light pieces at the bottom; in this orientation, the lower-left corner square must be dark.

These are extra rules accommodated in some tournaments and may vary: Each of the fifty dark squares has a number (1 through 50).

Then, for nearly sixty years, the title was held by representatives from either France or the Netherlands, including Herman Hoogland, Stanislas Bizot, Marius Fabre, Ben Springer, Maurice Raichenbach, Pierre Ghestem, and Piet Roozenburg.

In 1956, the hegemony of the French and the Dutch was broken: the champion was Canadian Marcel Deslauriers.

In 1958, the USSR's Iser Kuperman became the world champion, beginning the era of Soviet domination in international draughts, a feat which would mirror their domination at chess around this time.

A World Junior Championship has been contested since 1971; the first winner was Nicholay Mischansky.

[10] In 2003 computer draughts program Buggy beat world number 8 Samb.

[13] Alexander Schwarzman beat computer program Maximus on April 14, 2012.