papaTrex: That is one for Fencer to answer........I dont know if he reads this board or not so maybe a PM to him would be better.

Fencer reads this board, though he seems to be more of a Chess variants fan than Checkers variant fan. Least ways when there was a flurry of Checkers variants added a few months ago, he was reading here often.

I'm still waiting for Jump Checkers to get added to the site. It'll take the Checker's variant world by storm. :)

Walter Montego: Well, Fencer recently released 8 new checker variants. Four of them are in the bottom 10 of the number of currently running games, and 7 of them are in the bottom 25. Even the most popular one, International Checkers falls out of the top 60.

If you look at all checkers variants, none of them is ranked in the top 25 of the current number of running games - not even checkers itself. And 6 out of the bottom 10 of number of running games are checkers variants. Almost all of the checker variants tournaments I organize are cancelled because they can't attrack enough players.

If you only look at the numbers, checkers would be the worst category of games for Fencer to put an effort into.

OTOH, if you manage to find a checkers variant needing dice, it has a good chance of become a popular variant. Out the 10 most played games, only Chess (3) and Five in Line (8) do not involve dice.

AbigailII: Jump Checkers might not ever win any popularity events, but the game itself is unique as compared to so many of the Checkers variants on this site, which all seem to just be the same game with minor diferences. Jump Checkers has a completely different play feel to it. Much more Chess like. No double jumps, capturing is optional, split jumps, direct capturing of pieces, three distinct stages of play as the game develops. Various strategies for breaking through for a King or trying to foil your opponent's attempts to get a King or two for himself. Even sacrificing material for positional advantage can happen a lot more often than in Checkers and Checker variants though of course nothing like doing so in Chess.

It has no luck in it, so I suppose it'll never break the top sixty amongst those that just have to have some dice or other random mechanism in their games to have fun, but for those of us that like playing game where the outcome is mostly or wholely dependent on what the players do as compared to some outside factor, this is the kind of game I would rather play. AS far as I know, the game is balanced as to which side has the advantage at the start of the game, unlike some games here where one side has an often overwhelming advantage.(Maharaja Chess, Horde Chess) or a slight advantage (Pente), or where it is not determined if one side or the other has an advantage, but the play for each side is different for each side and dependent on who goes first as in Atomic Chess.

As for how many games are played as to determining if those games are more popular than ones that are played less, I'm not so sure that is the only way to gauge a game's popularity. Some games just take longer to play and require more study to play them well as compared to games that you just want to play a quick game of and not overly tax yourself in making the best move possible. Compare Ludo to Dark Chess or Embassy Chess. Games like Backgammon can be played on a very high level, but the best move is often times the only move and this makes for a faster game too. And then there's the luck factor which can make all the study in the world moot if you keep rolling double sixes and fives all game. I could quite easily play a few hundred games of Baclgammon on this site at one time with a short time limit as compared to say 80 games of Dark Chess with a longer time limit and even then I might make poor moves or run out of time. I've never played Ludo, but it looks quite a bit like "Sneak Around the Wigwam" and I know I could play at almost expert level of that and play fast as compared to just a couple games of Extinction Chess against a good player.