Things about Jeu de Dames

Jeux de Dames is a two player games. I played this game for 10 years on a competition level.

Play with Zillions-of-Games

If you are the happy owner of a copy of Zillions-of-Games, then you can play my version of "Jeu de Dames" using this package. This package is named Dames10b.zip as it is a beta version... The official version is now publish on the Zillions-of-Games web site. I need to thanks Ed van Zon for that and for the game logic developped for HexaDame.

Play by the rules

The most important thing for me in a game is to play by the rules. Before starting any game, make sure both player know the rules or it might finish on discussion on the rules themselves. As for Jeux de Dames concern, I learned the wrong rules with my grand parent. Then I started to play by the rules and discovered that most of the people do not know the rules. Of course, there are many variation in Jeu de Dames and the one I play is with International rules (which is known as 'Française' or 'Polonaise'). If you have to learn a kid (or anybody) to play a game, then make sure you know the rules. I think it is disturbing for a kid to meet other rules for the game they play. I think that in our society the rules should be the same for everybody, don't you agree.

My Jeux de Dames player history

I started to play Jeux de Dames at 10 with a Belgian competition for amateur player. I was 'minim' and I ranked second and received a color TV. If I had been first I could have went to New York. This TV I won is the biggest thing I ever won in my Jeux de Dames player's history. You won't make money by playing Jeux de Dame, at least in Belgium.

I continued to play in a 'club' and participated in many national competition. I never was first (at least in slow play) but was some times second. I participated in two international competition but with no much success.

Jeux de Dames give me many thing. It allowed me to learn to concentrate deeply, to analyze a situation, to make prevision and certainly help me building a better neural network. It also bring me a certain among of success and made me not like anybody else. I did travel a bit with Jeux de Dames, but it was mostly in Belgium. At a competition I also meet my first girlfriend (but I am not sure Jeux de Dames have something to do with it). I also was interested in other games.

Jeux de Dames was taking me too much time and did influence my studies in the wrong way. Some time it did give me strong headache when I was playing while I needed to sleep. Other bad effect of playing at a competition level, is to be unable to play with other people (you beat them) and feeling a bit alone in this matter. I did stop playing when I became 21 because I was no more a 'junior'. Not being a junior did mean for me to have to play with the older. It also meaned that I had to study (at least some theory) to be able to compete at their level. As I had other thing to study at that time and that I do not like much to 'memorize' thing, I prefer to compute.

Playing, human and computer

Long before my studies started I to wanted to make computer program to play Jeux de Dames. I did read a lot on computer game playing, alpha/beta, Artificial Intelligence and those kind of subject. I did write computer game, but never was able to write a Jeux de Dames. Maybe it does not help to be a good player to write a good program.

With my increase knowledge of computer science, my player background and my lectures, I am a good candidate to write computer game. I did wanted to make my 'memoire' on the game Abalone, but I discovered that it was already done. In my free time I did write few games, but did not distribute anything. I keep my attraction for game playing and writing computer game, but it is hard to make a living of that so I will keep it as a hobby.

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