Draughts board

For the past months I have been going through my storeroom and cupboards, trying to clean out the unnecessary stuff -- books, magazines and chess tournament bulletins -- but finding it almost impossible. Too much clinging to my material belongings although I know that I do not need them any more. They are no longer of any practical use to me but the very thought of throwing or giving them away pains me to no end. So back into the cupboard or storeroom from where they had emerged.

One item uncovered in the last few days was a homemade board of 64 squares. I posted the picture of it to a few chat groups. I mentioned that this was my very first chessboard and it could have been made in 1968 or 1969. Now, I'm not even sure that it is a chessboard. It could have been a draughts board. It would have also measured 8x8, the same as a chessboard.

Now, if it was a homemade draughts board, it could have been made even earlier than 1968. Possibly 1965 when I was still in Primary school. Chess was still far away from my mind but we kids were playing draughts (or dum-dum) during recess time or after school while waiting to be picked up by our parents or a school taxi driver or trishaw man. 

The game of draughts was all the rage. No need for sophisticated pieces. No horse head, no castle, no peculiar everything else. All that was needed were 24 bottle caps. And here, the type of bottle caps you owned probably hinted a lot at your social standing too. If your caps came from a brewery, you stood well above your friends who owned caps from soft drink bottles. Me? My caps were a mixture of everything, picked up from the coffee shop behind my home in Seang Tek Road in those days. But I proudly owned a homemade foldable draughts board...THIS draughts board.