The author of this site, dr Arie van der Stoep (1944), is a Dutch draughtsplayer. He studied Dutch language and literature at the University of Leyden (the Netherlands). About 1970 he fell under the spell of the history of checkers/draughts. From 1970 onwards he published in four Dutch draughts journals on the origin and the cultural history of the game (in Het Nieuwe Damspel 1974-1975, Dammagazine 1978-1986, Hoofdlijn 1988-up till now, Het Damspel 1990-up till now). In two English books he reported about the progress of his inquiries: in "A history of draughts" (1984) and in "Draughts in relation to chess and alquerque" (2005).

The classes at Leyden have a wide scope. Three disciplines in particular were profitable for Stoep's inquiries:

1. Argumentation: how do you judge other people's arguments and how do you compose your own arguments? The author uses an argumentation model which was developed by the English philosopher Stephen Toulmin.

2. Etymology, i.e. the inquiry into the origin of words. For the researcher who is engaged in the origin of draughts, knowledge of etymological methods is indispensable. Why? Because writers on the origin of draughts base themselves on the name for draughts in the Romance languages, as on French jeu de dames. The literal sense of this name, they assume, is "game of the chess queens". This implies that draughts came from chess. Etymology is a discipline within historical linguistics, Stoep's main subject. In 1997 he obtained his doctorate with a (Dutch) dissertation on the etymology of the French name jeu de dames, entitled "Over de herkomst van het woord damspel" (on the origin of the Dutch word damspel = 'draughts').

3. History of civilization: knowledge of cultural processes is necessary, of course, to understand and describe historical developments.