Checkers

Overview

Checkers — also called Draughts — is a two-player strategy game with small rules and sharp tactics. Each player starts with 12 pieces, and you win by capturing all of the opponent’s pieces or leaving them with no legal move.

The board has 64 squares but only the 32 dark ones are used. Ordinary pieces move diagonally forward; promoted Kings move both ways. And because captures are compulsory, a quiet-looking move can hand your opponent a forced sequence that rewrites the position.

A game takes a few minutes. The depth comes from looking further than the first capture.

Board setup

Twelve pieces each, on the three rows nearest your side, occupying the dark squares. The two central rows start empty. One side moves up the board, the other moves down, and ordinary pieces — men — may only move forward.

The centre matters because central pieces have more routes available and can support more captures. Pieces pushed to the edge lose half their options.

How to move

A man moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square. A quiet move captures nothing; it just changes what is possible next.

Because everything travels diagonally, proximity is misleading. A piece that looks adjacent to an enemy may have no way to reach it, while moving something else entirely can open a capture.

Captures are compulsory — across the whole board

This is the rule that shapes every game, and it is stricter than it first sounds.

If any of your pieces can capture, then every legal move you have is a capture. You cannot make a quiet developing move somewhere else on the board and leave the capture for later. The game simply will not offer you one.

A capture is a diagonal jump over an adjacent enemy piece onto the empty square beyond it. The jumped piece is removed.

The consequence is that you can make your opponent move. Offering a piece is not merely a gamble — if they have no other capture available, taking it is their only legal option, and you know exactly where their piece will end up.

Multiple jumps

After a jump, if the same piece can capture again, it must. The sequence continues until no further jump is available, which produces double, triple and longer chains.

So a capture cannot be judged by its first jump. Winning a piece may leave yours sitting where the opponent’s reply takes two. And a sacrifice that looks like losing material can be the strongest move on the board if it forces a chain that ends with your counter-capture.

Kings

A man reaching the far rank is crowned a King, marked with a gold K.

Kings move and capture diagonally in both directions — but still one square at a time. They do not slide the length of a diagonal as they do in international draughts. The gain is direction, not distance.

That still changes everything. A piece that could only threaten forward can now trap and chase, and in a thinning endgame a single King often decides the game. Getting one is a real objective; over-extending a man to reach the far rank is a common way to lose it.

How to win

• Capture all of the opponent’s pieces, or
• leave them with no legal move.

The second matters. You do not need to take everything — a player whose remaining pieces are all blocked has lost. Mobility is a resource, and taking it away is a way to win.

Strategy and tips

• Scan for captures before anything else. If one exists, it is your only move — so plan from there rather than from the move you wanted to make.
• Read the whole chain. Ask where your piece ends up, not what it takes on the way.
• Use compulsion. Offer a piece when the forced reply pulls a defender away or drops it into your counter-capture.
• Hold the centre. More routes, more support, more captures available.
• Keep the back row a while. It is what stops an enemy man being crowned; give it up too early and you invite a King.
• Trade when ahead, complicate when behind. Simplifying protects a material lead; keeping pieces on gives you chances to set a trap.
• Ask what happens after the capture. Winning one piece is a bad trade if the capturing piece is lost immediately.

Three levels of computer opponent

The difficulty settings are not cosmetic — they change how far the engine looks ahead.

• Vs AI — Easy. "A relaxed match." No lookahead at all: it picks the best immediate move and does not consider your reply.
• Vs AI — Medium. "A tougher opponent." Searches one move deep, so it sees the obvious recapture.
• Vs AI — Hard. "Deep search, ruthless play." Searches five moves deep, with a longer time budget to do it.

That gap is why Easy forgives a loose capture and Hard does not. Against Hard, a piece left hanging is usually taken as part of a sequence it worked out several moves earlier — check its available captures before you commit to yours.

Playing another person

Pass & Play puts two people on one device, handing the board back and forth after each turn — no second phone needed, and a good way to learn, since both players can take time over the forced sequences.

Online multiplayer against a remote opponent is available in the Android and iOS apps. The browser version plays against the computer or a friend beside you.

Controls and features

• Tap or click a piece to select it, then tap a highlighted square to move.
• Two piece themes: Red vs Blue and Black vs White.
• Designed for landscape on touch devices — rotate if prompted.
• Choose Easy, Medium, Hard or Pass & Play from the menu, and restart at any time.

Checkers is easy to learn because the movement rules are tiny. The difficulty is in what those rules force you to do. Every capture is compulsory, every jump can become another, and every advancing man is a King in waiting.

Control the centre, calculate the forced exchanges, and never assume the first available capture is the best one.

If you liked Checkers

Nine Men’s Morris and Konane are the other classic two-player abstracts here — Konane in particular is built entirely on jumping captures, with the twist that a player who cannot move loses.

For capture-driven play with a different shape, Lines of Action asks you to gather your pieces into a single connected group rather than eliminate the opponent.