Checkers

Challenge your mind with Checkers, a classic board game of strategy. Move your pieces wisely and capture your opponent's to win.

Basics Variants Time Controls

English Draughts

The "English" variant of checkers is played on an 8x8 board with 12 pieces per player. The player playing with the red pieces moves first.

Pawns, or "men", can only move and capture forward diagonally. Kings can move and capture diagonally in any direction. Both types of pieces can only move one square diagonally, and can only jump to the square immediately beyond the piece that they are jumping.

International Draughts

The "International" variant of checkers is played on a 10x10 board with 20 pieces per player. The player playing with the red pieces moves first.

Pawns ("men") can only move forward diagonally but can capture both forwards and backwards diagonally.

Kings (called "flying kings" in the international variant) can move in any direction diagonally as far as one likes as long as the path is not blocked by an opponent's piece.

Kings in the international variant also have the ability to jump to any free square beyond an enemy piece when making a capture.

In the international variant, in addition to captures being mandatory when presented, when the opportunity for multiple captures arises, the path of captures that results in the maximum amount of captured pieces must be taken.