The Complete Rules of Checkers

Checkers - known as draughts almost everywhere outside North America - is a game of pure skill played on a chequered board. The rules below cover the standard American game in full, then show exactly how each of the eleven variants on Checkers.now changes them.

The core idea never changes: slide your pieces forward, jump over your opponent's to capture them, crown a king when you reach the far side, and win by leaving your opponent with nothing to move. Everything else - board size, whether men capture backwards, how far kings fly - is a variation on that theme.

Setting up the board

Checkers is played on an 8x8 board of 64 squares, the same board as chess. Only the 32 dark squares are ever used. Turn the board so that each player has a dark square in the far-left corner. Each player places 12 pieces on the dark squares of the three rows nearest to them, leaving the two centre rows empty. On Checkers.now, Red sits at the bottom and White at the top.

Moving your pieces

Red moves first, then play alternates. On your turn you move one piece. An ordinary piece - called a man - slides one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square. Men never move straight, sideways or backward, and they can never land on an occupied square.

Capturing (jumping)

When one of your men is diagonally adjacent to an opponent's piece and the square directly beyond it is empty, you jump over the enemy piece and remove it from the board. If, after landing, the same piece can jump again, it must - a single turn can chain several jumps and clear a whole diagonal. In American checkers you may choose between different capturing moves, but you may not decline to capture: if a jump is available, you must take one.

Kinging: crowning a man

When a man reaches the far row - the king row - it is crowned by stacking a second piece on top. A king is far more powerful: it moves and captures diagonally both forward and backward. In American checkers a king still moves only one square at a time, but in many other variants a "flying" king can slide any distance along an open diagonal.

How to win, and how to draw

You win when your opponent has no legal move - either because you have captured all their pieces, or because you have blocked every one that remains. When neither side can force a win, usually when only a few kings are left, the game is a draw. Most rule sets call a draw automatically after a long stretch of moves with no capture.

Every variant at a glance

Standard checkers rules

The familiar 8x8 games. American keeps kings short-ranged and lets you choose your capture; Pool adds backward captures and flying kings; Italian forbids men from taking kings and enforces a strict capture order.

International checkers rules

Big-board draughts on 10x10 and 12x12. Men capture in both directions, kings fly the full length of a diagonal, and you must always take the capture that removes the most pieces.

Slavic checkers rules

Fast 8x8 games from Eastern Europe. Russian crowns a man mid-jump so it can keep capturing as a king; Czech keeps things simple but forces a king to capture ahead of a man.

Latin checkers rules

The draughts of Spain and Latin America. Men capture forward only, kings fly, and the maximum-capture rule rewards players who count the longest jump before moving.

Variants checkers rules

The outliers. Turkish draughts moves orthogonally instead of diagonally and its kings fly like a rook; Anti-Checkers flips the goal so that losing all your pieces is how you win.

Rules questions players ask

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