Checkers

How to play

Checkers is played on the dark squares of the board. Your pieces are red and start at the bottom; you move first. Tap a piece to select it, and the squares it can reach are marked with a dot — tap one to move there. Pieces move diagonally forward one square at a time.

When one of your pieces can jump an opponent's piece and land on the empty square beyond, it captures it. If a capture is available anywhere on the board you must take it: capturing is compulsory in both variants, and the board will tell you when that is why a move was refused. A jump that can be followed by another jump must be played out in full.

A piece that reaches the far row is crowned a king, which can move backwards as well as forwards. You win by capturing all of your opponent's pieces, or by leaving them with no legal move — being unable to move is a loss in checkers, not a draw as it would be in chess.

Two sets of rules

The American checkers rules most people in the English-speaking world grew up with are the default: an eight-by-eight board with twelve pieces a side, men that capture forwards only, and kings that move one square at a time. When several captures are available you may choose between them.

International draughts is the game played competitively across Europe, and it is a noticeably deeper one. The board is ten by ten with twenty pieces a side, men may capture backwards as well as forwards, and kings fly — they slide any distance along a diagonal and can land anywhere beyond a piece they capture. It also requires that you take the maximum number of pieces available, so when two captures are on offer the bigger one is the only legal move.

One consequence worth knowing before you switch: in American checkers a man that reaches the crowning row during a jump is crowned immediately and its turn ends there, even if another jump is available. In International the man carries on jumping as a man, and is crowned only if the sequence happens to finish on that row.

Playing the computer, or a friend

The computer opponent offers three levels. Easy looks one move ahead and will miss things; medium plays a reasonable club game; hard searches considerably deeper and punishes a loose exchange. Because International has so many more moves to consider at each turn, the hard setting searches less deeply there than it does in American — it is still the stronger opponent of the two.

Switching the opponent to two players passes the same board back and forth on one device, with no computer involved. Your game is saved in this browser as you play, so closing the tab does not cost you the position.

Tips for a stronger game

Hold your back row for as long as you reasonably can. Every piece still standing on your own home row is a square your opponent cannot crown on, and giving that up early is the most common way a beginner loses a game they were otherwise winning.

Because captures are compulsory, offering a piece is a real weapon. If you can see that a capture forces your opponent into a reply you have already answered, a piece is often a cheap price — a two-for-one exchange wins material outright, and a forced sequence takes the choice away from them entirely.

Trade pieces when you are ahead. Reducing the material on the board makes an extra piece proportionally more valuable, and an endgame with a king against a lone man is usually a straightforward win.