This is the
D'Orio triangle, a formation which Julius D'Orio considered extremely important
to winning checkers. The first thing to notice about this formation is that the
opponent probably cannot king without at least one sacrifice.Return to my Checkers pages
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© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
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This is the
D'Orio triangle, a formation which Julius D'Orio considered extremely important
to winning checkers. The first thing to notice about this formation is that the
opponent probably cannot king without at least one sacrifice.
But, a player cannot maintain this formation very long. Here White will be playing with his/her six other pieces, while the opponent plays with many more pieces than that (probably keeping a couple pieces on the back row). So, assuming that the D'Orio triangle is of some importance, a great deal of judgement must be used in deciding when to move some of the pieces of the triangle. And, of course, the opponent may trade off one or more pieces of the triangle.
Sometimes maintaining this triangle wins, sometimes it loses. Mr. D'Orio seems to have been the only person in history who considered this formation of fundamental importance. Players of today tend to take each kind of opening position separately, and do not rely too much on general principles (especially dogmatic principles). As I have said elsewhere (Jim Loy-Brassey, 2002 ItsYourTurn.com), "We cannot rely on general ideas like 'this move looks safe,' or 'this move looks strong.' Instead, we must judge moves by their consequences, both immediate and into the distant future." Let me say that we do rely on such general ideas, but we cannot rely on them very heavily. To help us make such judgements, we try to look into the future, and we memorize a few openings. We are sure that this more is safe, because we have studied it, or because other people have studied it, and we have some idea how to follow it up. That is actually what Mr. D'Orio did; he studied many openings, and often knew when to break up his triangle. And then he thought it was his triangle that had won the game.
We may know some general guiding principle, like "9-13 is weak." But we have to be aware that there are exceptions, and we probably need to know some variations of our favorite openings which are exceptions to this "rule." Actually, 9-13 is often very strong, and we may memorize variations in which 9-13 is strong. We must often consider 9-13, just to see what the consequences will be. Is it strong or is it weak?