Nectary

Checkers

Checkers, two ways

Play the American game you grew up with, or International draughts on a bigger board with flying kings. Your game is saved in this browser, so you can stop and come back.

Setting up the board…

The two games

New to checkers, or played it as a child? Start with American checkers. Looking for something deeper? Try International draughts: the bigger board, backward captures and flying kings make for long, tactical games.

American checkers

8 by 8 · 12 pieces each

  1. Played on the dark squares of an 8 by 8 board. Each side starts with 12 pieces on the three rows nearest it. Honey moves first.
  2. A piece moves one square diagonally forward to an empty square.
  3. It captures by jumping diagonally forward over an enemy piece to the empty square just beyond. The jumped piece is removed.
  4. Captures are required. When you can capture you must, but you may choose which capture to make. Once a piece starts jumping, it keeps jumping as long as it can.
  5. A piece that reaches the far row is crowned a king. Crowning ends the move, even in the middle of a capture.
  6. Kings move and capture one square diagonally, forward or backward.
  7. You win when your opponent has no pieces left or no legal move. The game is drawn when the same position comes up three times, or after 40 moves each with no capture and no ordinary piece moved.

International draughts

10 by 10 · 20 pieces each

  1. Played on the dark squares of a 10 by 10 board. Each side starts with 20 pieces on the four rows nearest it. Honey moves first.
  2. A piece moves one square diagonally forward to an empty square.
  3. Pieces capture forward and backward, by jumping an enemy piece next to them to the empty square beyond.
  4. Captures are required, and you must make the capture that takes the most pieces. During a capture, jumped pieces stay on the board until the move ends, and no piece can be jumped twice.
  5. A piece is crowned a king only if it ends its move on the far row. Passing through the far row during a capture doesn’t count.
  6. Kings fly: they move any distance along a diagonal, and capture a piece any distance away, landing on any empty square beyond it.
  7. You win when your opponent has no pieces left or no legal move. The game is drawn when the same position comes up three times, or after 25 moves each in which only kings move and nothing is captured.

A very old game, now solved

Checkers grew out of alquerque, a game described in Arabic writing from the 900s and in a Spanish book of games from the 1200s. Moved onto a chessboard, and with captures made compulsory, it became the game we know; the English rules were settled by about 1800.

In 2007, after computers had worked on the problem almost without pause since 1989, Jonathan Schaeffer’s team at the University of Alberta proved that American checkers is a draw: if both sides play perfectly, nobody wins. Luckily, nobody plays perfectly.