Lasca

Lasca (also called Laska or Laskers) is a draughts (or checkers) variant, invented by the second World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941). Lasca is derived from English draughts (American checkers) and the Russian draughts game bashni (Towers).

==History== Emanuel Lasker became familiar with bashni in the 19th century while participating in chess tournaments in Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to contemporary memoirs, in Moscow Lasker stayed in the house of D. I. Sargin, a famous historian, researcher, and popularizer of board games. By the time he met Lasker, Sargin was regularly editing columns on draughts (towers) in several Russian newspapers and magazines. The mutual influence of these famous researchers on each other is quite obvious, since Sargin is the author of the fundamental work "The Antiquity of the games of checkers and chess", and Lasker's book "Board games of Nations" was repeatedly reprinted.