Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Schada - a crossover between Chess and Draughts from the 1930's

In 1938 or slightly earlier, Jan Boogert from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, invented a board game that was a crossover between chess and checkers. (The spelling of the name of the inventor may be wrong, as different sources contradict each other.) The game was called Schada, het Wereld Spel, (translated as: Schada, the World Game. Schada is probably formed as a combinated of two Dutch words: Schaken (Chess), and Dammen (Draughts, the European form of Checkers).

The game is played on a board of eight by eight squares. Each square has a small diagram on it, that tells how pieces on this square move. Each player has sixteen pieces: eight pawns, four officers, and four chief officers ("hoofdofficiers").

Other rules are not known to me. If someone has more information, then please contact us.

The game was produced by a company called Multicolor Deventer, a company that sold more board games in the period, and was sold in the years 1938 - 1941 in the Netherlands. It was patented in the Netherlands and Belgium. A Schada club briefly existed, with the inventor as chairman, and in 1939/1940, a Schada championship was held.

Board of Schada


WWW page made by Hans Bodlaender. Information from http://www.catawiki.nl/catalogus/spellen/algemene-spelnamen/dam/422117-schada-het-wereld-spel.
WWW page created: December 27, 2011.