How to play Checkers
Checkers, or draughts, on an 8 × 8 board with twelve pieces a side. Move diagonally, jump enemy pieces to capture them and get a man to the far row to crown it a king. Take every piece the other side has, or leave it without a move, and you win.
These are the rules of English draughts, the game played in Britain and North America. If you learned Russian, Brazilian or international draughts, two things differ: men never capture backwards, and kings move only one square at a time.
Rules
- Only the dark squares are used. You have the solid pieces and start on the bottom three rows; the outlined pieces start at the top. Solid moves first.
- A man moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty square. A king moves one square diagonally in any direction. Kings do not fly: no piece moves more than one square except by jumping.
- To capture, jump diagonally over an adjacent enemy piece onto the empty square just behind it. Men capture forward only; kings capture forwards and backwards.
- Capturing is compulsory. If any of your pieces can capture, you must, but you choose which capture to make; it need not be the one that takes the most. The pieces that must capture are ringed.
- If the piece that just jumped can jump again, it must, until it can’t. No piece can be jumped twice in one move.
- A man that reaches the far row is crowned a king, marked with a crown, and that ends its move, even in the middle of a chain of jumps.
- You lose when it is your turn and you have no pieces or no legal move. The game is drawn after 40 moves by each side with no capture and no man moving, or when the same position comes up a third time with the same side to move.
- Against the computer, a win scores 100 for each of your pieces still on the board plus 10 for every move under 60 that you needed. Losses and draws score nothing, and each level keeps its own records. Undo takes back your last move and the computer’s reply; a game won with an undo is saved but not ranked. Starting a new game halfway counts as resigning.
- In 2 players mode two people take turns on one device. Player 1 has the solid pieces. Nothing is saved.
Controls
- Click / tap a piece
- Pick it up; the squares it can move to are marked
- Click / tap a marked square
- Move there. In a multi-jump, tap each landing square in turn, or the last one if only one chain ends there
- Drag
- Drag a piece to where it goes
- Arrows / WASD
- Move the keyboard cursor
- Enter / Space
- Pick up or place the piece under the cursor; after a game, start the next
- Esc
- Put the piece back down
- Z / U / Backspace / Ctrl+Z
- Undo
- N
- New game
Tips
- Keep your back row at home as long as you can. While those men stay put, the other side can’t crown on their squares.
- Before every move, check what it lets the other side capture. Captures are compulsory, so a piece you offer forces the reply, and that reply can set up a double jump for you.
- Trade pieces when you are ahead. Seven against six is close; two against one is usually a win.
Checkers strategy
How the computer judges a position
It counts a man as 100 and a king as 160, adds 3 for every row a man has advanced, 8 for each man still on its own back row and 6 for a king on one of the eight central squares. When it is ahead it also likes trading down and steering its kings toward your pieces. Easy plays a random move one time in four and judges the rest with a lot of noise, so it gives pieces away; Medium sees four moves ahead plus every capture; Hard usually sees eight to twelve.
The two-for-one shot
Because captures are compulsory, giving a piece away can force the reply you want. Put a man where it must be taken; if the capturing piece then lands beside one of yours with an empty square behind it, you jump back two or three. Look for it whenever an enemy piece would have to land between two of yours. Easy and Medium miss the ones set up more than a few moves ahead; Hard rarely does.
Your back row
Every man left on your back row is a square the other side can’t crown on, which is why the computer values them too. Advance from the sides and the middle first and give the back row up last. Once the other side has a king, a back-row man becomes a target that can only move forward, so use it before it gets trapped.
Finishing a won ending
Two kings against one is a win, but not with one king alone: the defender runs for a double corner, where two dark squares meet at a corner of the board, and you need both kings to drive it out. Mind the clock. After 40 moves each with no capture and no man moving the game is drawn, and the board shows the count once 15 or fewer of those moves remain.
About Checkers
English draughts is the 8 × 8 game with short kings and forward-only captures by men. Most other draughts families give kings long, flying moves and let men capture backwards, and international draughts is played on a 10 × 10 board. The rules here are the English ones, with the usual 40-move and threefold-repetition draws so that every game ends.
The computer looks ahead with an alpha-beta search, the method board-game programs have used for decades. Easy looks two moves ahead and sometimes plays at random, Medium four, and Hard as far as a fixed amount of work allows, usually eight to twelve moves plus every capture. It thinks in a separate thread, so the board never freezes.
Questions
Is capturing compulsory in checkers?
Yes, in English draughts. If you can capture you must, and the capturing piece must keep jumping while it can. When there are several captures you may choose any of them.
Can a king move more than one square?
Not here. In English draughts a king moves one square diagonally, forwards or backwards, and captures by jumping one adjacent piece at a time. Flying kings belong to Russian, Brazilian and international draughts.
Can men capture backwards?
No. In English draughts men move and capture forward only. Only kings capture backwards.
How is the score calculated?
A win against the computer scores 100 for each piece you have left plus 10 for every move under 60. On Medium the Expert level is 500 and the Pro level 1,000. Losses and draws score 0, and wins with an undo are kept but not ranked.
