"Checkers" and "draughts" name the same family, but they do not name the same game. An American player sitting down to an International board will lose repeatedly, and not because the opponent is better - because half of what they know no longer applies.
Three rules do almost all of the work: how far a king moves, whether ordinary pieces can capture backwards, and how big the board is. Change any one and the game changes character.
The flying king
This is the single biggest divide in the draughts world.
In American checkers, a king moves one square diagonally, in any direction. It is better than a man, but not dramatically so - two kings against one is often a draw, and the endgame is a careful manoeuvring exercise.
In International draughts, a king is a flying king: it slides any distance along a diagonal, and when it captures it may land on any empty square beyond the captured piece. That is closer to a bishop in chess than to a checkers king.
The consequences run deep. A single flying king can dominate an entire quadrant. Endgames that would be drawn in American are winning. And most importantly, promotion becomes a strategic goal worth real sacrifice - giving up two men to crown is frequently correct, which would be absurd in the American game.
Backward capture
In American checkers an uncrowned man captures only forwards. In International, Russian and most continental variants, men capture in all four diagonal directions while still only moving forwards.
This sounds like a footnote. It roughly doubles the tactical density of the game.
With backward capture, a piece you have safely passed is still dangerous. Formations that would be solid in American are riddled with holes. Combinations run longer because a capturing sequence can double back on itself, and chains of four, five or six captures are routine rather than remarkable.
It also changes what a safe structure looks like. American players build forward-facing walls; that instinct is actively harmful in a backward-capture game, because the wall can be eaten from behind.
Board size
American uses 8x8 with twelve pieces a side. International uses 10x10 with twenty. Canadian goes to 12x12 with thirty.
More squares does not simply mean more of the same. A larger board means longer diagonals, which makes flying kings stronger still, and it means more space to manoeuvre before contact - so openings are slower and the middlegame is richer.
It also changes the draw rate. The 8x8 game is deeply analysed and draws heavily between strong players; it was proven a draw under perfect play in 2007. The larger boards are far from solved, simply because the state space is enormously bigger.
The variants that change something else entirely
Beyond those three axes, several variants here adjust a rule that reshapes the whole game:
- Russian lets a man that reaches the back row during a capture promote immediately and continue jumping as a king. A single move can crown and then sweep the board.
- Italian forbids men from capturing kings, and requires capturing with a king when possible. Kings become enormously more valuable, and protecting a king is nearly free.
- Spanish uses flying kings but restricts how men capture - a hybrid that plays unlike either parent.
- Turkish abandons diagonals entirely: pieces move and capture orthogonally, and the board uses all squares. It is barely recognisable as the same family, and it is the best argument that "checkers" describes a mechanism rather than a game.
- Pool and Brazilian sit between the American and International rule sets in different ways.
The draw problem, and how variants answer it
There is a reason so many rule variations exist, and it is not decoration. Draughts has a draw problem: between two competent players on a small board, careful play tends toward equality, and at the top level the American game became so drawish that tournaments adopted forced opening moves - dealing out randomly chosen opening sequences so that players could not simply steer into analysed drawn lines.
Nearly every variant in this list is, among other things, an attempt to make decisive games more common. Bigger boards add space and complexity. Flying kings make promotion worth sacrificing for, which creates imbalance. Backward capture makes positions sharper and mistakes more punishable. Mid-capture promotion in the Russian game lets a single move flip a position outright.
Seen that way, the family is a long argument about how much sharpness a game needs, conducted over a couple of centuries by people adjusting one rule at a time. That is worth knowing when choosing which to play: you are really choosing a draw rate and a combination length.
Which one should you play?
A rough guide based on what you want from a game:
| If you want | Play | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Deep, studied theory | American | Centuries of analysis; precise endgames |
| Long spectacular combinations | International | Backward capture plus flying kings |
| Decisive games, fewer draws | Russian | Mid-capture promotion creates sudden wins |
| Something genuinely unfamiliar | Turkish | Orthogonal movement changes everything |
| To have your instincts inverted | Anti-Checkers | Losing your pieces is the goal |
What transfers and what does not
Between variants, the things that transfer are the general ones: control the centre, do not advance in isolation, count tempo, calculate forcing sequences to the end. The things that do not transfer are all the concrete patterns - the specific shots, the standard formations, the endgame techniques.
Which is a useful reminder about game skill generally. The portable part is the habit of calculating a forced line completely before committing to it; the non-portable part is everything you memorised. Anyone who has moved between related games knows the feeling - the reasoning still works, the reflexes actively mislead.
It is the same relationship between the disc-flipping games and the territory games: Play Reversi and the mobility principle feels like it should apply to any board game, while the specific corner patterns apply to nothing else. And the tile games make the point from further away - play Dominoes online and the spatial reasoning is familiar while every concrete technique is new.
The exercise
Play three games of American and three of International back to back, and pay attention to how often a piece you had written off as passed comes back to capture you. That single experience is the clearest demonstration of what backward capture does.
The rules hub sets out the exact rules for every variant here, the piece-count FAQ covers setup differences, and the glossary names the terms. The main game is the standard starting point.
For how the forced-capture rule turns into an attacking weapon, see the companion piece.