Changelog
Every change to the games and the site, newest first.
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Checkers and Backgammon are here, four ways to play each, alone or online. Four new two-deck solitaires come with them.
Two classic board games you can now play here, against the computer or against another person online, and four more solitaires to go with them.
Checkers
Checkers comes in four versions. Checkers uses the American rules most people grew up with. International Draughts moves to the bigger 10x10 board, and Russian and Brazilian Draughts stay on 8x8 but let a king fly along a whole diagonal.
Play the computer on easy, normal or hard, or take a seat at an online table. The game keeps to the rules for you: if you can capture, you have to, and a capture keeps going while there is another piece to jump. In International and Brazilian you must take as many pieces as you can. Draws by repetition, or when a game stops going anywhere, are called automatically, so there is nothing to claim.
Backgammon
Play Backgammon as you know it, or one of three variations. Nackgammon starts with four checkers back in your opponent's home board instead of two, which makes for longer, more tactical games. Hypergammon gives each side just three checkers. Portes is the Greek game, played without the doubling cube.
Choose a single game or a match to 3, 5 or 7 points. Matches bring in the doubling cube and the Crawford rule, as in tournament play. Pip counts sit beside the board, and if you would rather not press the dice every turn, switch on Roll for me in the settings. Setting Speed to Fast makes the computer move quicker too.
Four new solitaire games
All four are played with two decks.
- Aces and Kings builds eight foundations at once: four up from the Aces and four down from the Kings, and suits don't matter.
- Busy Aces deals twelve single cards, built down in suit, and gives you one pass through the stock, so every card counts.
- Gypsy starts with cards face down under each pile and lets you move whole runs. Every deal from the stock puts a card on each pile.
- Miss Milligan only lets a King into an empty pile. Once the stock runs out, you can set a card or a run aside in a reserve.
Each one has a daily deal, and if you only want boards that can be won, turn on Winnable in the New deal menu.
Other changes
- Win all four Checkers variants for the Checkers Master achievement, and all four Backgammon variants for Backgammon Master. Aces and Kings now counts toward the Solitaire collection.
- In German, Spanish, French and Russian, game pages are now titled with the name each game goes by there, such as Шашки for Checkers and Galgenmännchen for Hangman.
- The Ludo, Blackjack and Bingo guides explain how they compare with Parchís, Mensch ärgere dich nicht, 17 und 4, Ochko and Russian Loto.
- In the Forty Thieves games, tall stock and waste piles look tidier, with fewer cards sticking out at the edges.
- Grandfather's Clock switches to an oval dial on short, wide screens, which leaves room for bigger cards.