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About Dameo
Dameo owes its existence to:
  1. Croda, invented by the Croatian mathematics professor and Draughts master Ljuban Dedić.
  2. A sleeping ambition to introduce 'linear movement' in a draughts environment.
Linear movement means that not only a man, but an entire line of men may move one square forward. It is the very soul of Bushka, and it was in the process of inventing that game that I had considered it as a vehicle for movement in a draughts game.
For the sake of argument, in International Draughts, differences in pace derive from one source only, namely captures. So bringing in a bit of flexibility wouldn't hurt. Apart from that it's not hard to see that it would open up a new range of tactics.
The reason I didn't do it at the time, is that Draughts is drawish, and introducing linear movement doesn't have any effect on that. Besides it's rather crammed in the opening and I could see forces grinding into interlocking positions, because the direction of movement and capture are the same.
This however is not the case in Croda, where a man moves straight or diagonally forward, while all capture is straight only. That makes a big difference in terms of linear movement, because it counteracts, even eliminates, the tendency for gridlock. That's how Dameo happened, quite unintentionally. It's rules fell into place in less than a minute.

I consider Dameo to be the most modern and best 'sportsweapon' of all draughts variants. Additional reasons are given in Draughts Dissected.

As a matter of completeness we mention Hexdameo. It will be clear that a game with a relatively slow build-up like Hexdame will profit from linear movement. Hexdame's raison d'être is that it is a literal translation of International Draughts to the hexgrid, not that it is the best possible draughtsgame on that grid. Speeding things up with linear movement gives a more exciting game in terms of speed and combinatorial richness.

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