A lot has happened on lidraughts over the past few months. Many new players have found their way to the website, with the monthly amount of blitz players on its way to 2000. And in the last 2 months there have been almost as many games played on lidraughts as in the 1,5 years before that!

Despite the hardships of the COVID-19 crisis, it is beautiful to see the creativity that it also brings about in people. We've seen many draughts tournaments and other intitiatives come about from all over the world, to fill the void of all the physical events being cancelled. Anyone that has an idea they may need help with, or just wants to discuss what's possible, please send an e-mail to contact@lidraughts.org.

There have been many changes and updates to the website as well, including some awesome lichess features that we've now brought to lidraughts. Time to recap the biggest new developments!

Live broadcasts

Almost two months ago we've had our first live tournament broadcasts. This included the Belgian Championship and the Frisian draughts tournament Fryslân Open. These tournaments use digital boards that transmit the moves and clocktimes while the games are being played. This way we can show the games of each round live in a study, with a multiboard overview and all the usual analysis tools.

While those initial broadcasts were a success, the feature is still marked as beta because more real life testing is needed. And with all physical draughts events being cancelled, it will likely stay in beta a bit longer than originally planned. But once things return back to normal, keep an eye on the broadcasts section for any upcoming live events!

Streamers

Integration for Twitch & YouTube streamers is on its way! This feature is currently still in development and is available to selected users only. But once registration is opened for the general public, any streamer with sufficient quality content can apply. Those approved by the moderators will be listed on the lidraughts streamer page.

Once listed as a lidraughts streamer, we will detect it when your stream goes live with "lidraughts.org" in the title. This way you can also stream other content without it showing up on lidraughts. The live stream will then be advertised with a banner that is visible at all games the streamer plays, in the lobby of tournaments and simuls they participate in, and in studies they are contributing to. Selected streamers may also be advertised on the lidraughts home page.

Keep an eye on the blog if you're interested in becoming a lidraughts streamer. We will announce more details at a later point in time!

Quick captures

We've added the option to play all the steps of a multi-capture at once, completing the whole capture in one click. In game play we consider it part of the skill to play multi-captures quickly yourself. But during analysis it can become cumbersome to enter every step of a capture manually every time. With this new setting you no longer have to do this on analysis boards:

In this picture the white man on square 33 is selected, with square 31 as its only possible destination. When 31 is clicked it will complete the capture 33x24x15x4x13x22x31 in one go. When a capture to the same destination can be done in different ways, a choice will appear at each point where the paths split.

This setting can be enabled at preferences. It applies to studies, puzzles and the analysis board.

Tournament management

We've made it much easier to create and manage your own tournaments. A list of all your tournaments has been added in the tournaments section on your profile page. It can also be found by following the My tournaments link on the tournament home page:

It is now also possible to change tournaments after you have created them, as long as they haven't started yet. In the lobby of tournaments created by you, there is a small gear icon on the top left:

Click this button to edit the tournament settings, or cancel the tournament entirely. The starting date and time can be found under advanced settings.

Last but not least, you can now also add a description to your tournaments. There you can explain what the tournament is about, and anything else you want to tell the players. Your description text will be visible in the tournament lobby, on the top left above the chat.

Lidraughts Patrons

We've opened up a donations page for those who want to support the lidraughts team and become a patron. Everything on lidraughts is done on a voluntary basis, and the server and hosting expenses are paid out of our own pocket. Of course we love doing this, and we can afford the expenses, so anyone can happily use lidraughts for free. Still support in the form of a donation is greatly appreciated, and can help open up further possibilities of growth for the website.

Of course we will never break our promise that everyone will be able to enjoy all features for free, forever! But those who donate get bragging rights with a patron wings icon at their account :)

Donations can be made from the lidraughts patron page using PayPal or a credit card. For credit card donations you can also use the Donate with PayPal button, and then click Pay with Credit or Debit Card on the PayPal checkout page.

Update: Apparently PayPal doesn't accept credit card payments without an account in every country. If you only see a Create an Account button as the alternative to logging in, this payment method is not available in your country.