Checkers

How to Play Checkers

1. 1Tap one of your highlighted pieces to select it.
2. 2Tap a marked square to move there diagonally.
3. 3Jump over an opponent to capture — captures are mandatory.
4. 4Reach the far row to crown a King that moves both ways.

The Rules in Full

Checkers is played on the 32 dark squares of an 8×8 board. Each side begins with twelve men on the three rows closest to them. Ordinary men move one square diagonally forward to an empty dark square. To capture, you jump diagonally over an adjacent opposing piece and land on the empty square directly beyond it, removing the jumped piece. If, after landing, the same piece can jump again, it must — a chain of jumps in a single turn is one of the most satisfying (and decisive) moments in the game.

Captures are compulsory: whenever a jump is available you have to take it. A man that reaches the opponent's back row is promoted to a King, gaining the ability to move and jump backward as well as forward. You win by capturing all of your opponent's pieces, or by leaving them with no legal move on their turn.

Playing the Computer

The computer opponent comes in three strengths. Easy makes fast, sometimes random choices and forgives mistakes, making it ideal when you are learning. Medium looks a few moves ahead and will trade pieces sensibly. Hard searches many moves deep using minimax with alpha-beta pruning; it prizes kings, controls the centre, and will exploit any piece you leave undefended. If Hard feels tough, that is the point — beating it means you are playing genuinely strong checkers.

The Ancient History of Checkers

Checkers is one of the oldest games humanity still plays, with roots stretching back thousands of years. Its most direct ancestor is a game called Alquerque, played in the ancient Middle East and later throughout the Mediterranean world, boards for which have been found carved into stone structures dating back millennia. Around the 12th century, someone in southern Europe adapted Alquerque onto the 8×8 chessboard and added the rule that pieces promote on reaching the far side — and the game we recognise as checkers was essentially born.

The mandatory-capture rule was a later addition (the French called a version jeu forcé), and it transformed the game's character, making it sharper and more tactical. Today the game is known as checkers in North America and draughts in Britain and much of the Commonwealth, and it exists in many regional variants — the 8×8 American/English version played here, and the larger 10×10 international draughts with its more powerful “flying” kings among them. Few games can claim such a long, continuous history.

Checkers Has Been Solved by Computers

One of the most remarkable facts about checkers is that, unlike chess, it has been completely solved. In 2007, after nearly two decades of computation, a team led by the researcher Jonathan Schaeffer announced that their program Chinook had solved the game: they proved that with perfect play from both sides, the standard game of checkers is a draw. Neither player can force a win against a flawless opponent.

This was a landmark achievement in artificial intelligence — checkers was by far the largest game ever solved at the time, involving roughly 500 billion billion possible positions. It does not make the game pointless for humans, of course: no person plays perfectly, so games are decided by who makes the fewer and smaller mistakes. But it means that at the highest level, victory comes not from a brilliant winning plan but from relentless accuracy and the patience to punish an opponent's errors — a humbling and fascinating thing to know as you play.

Strategic Principles Beyond the Basics

Once you know the rules, a handful of deeper principles separate strong players from casual ones. The first is tempo and initiative: because captures are forced, you can often steer the game by offering a trade that compels your opponent to respond, seizing control of the flow. Sacrificing a single piece to force a sequence that wins two back is one of the most powerful ideas in the game, and it is only possible because of the mandatory-capture rule.

The second is controlling the centre and keeping structure. Pieces in the middle have more mobility and more capturing options, while lone men pushed too far forward become easy targets; advancing in mutually supporting pairs keeps them safe. The third is the endgame concept of the opposition (sometimes called “the move”) — a subtle parity idea about whose turn it is when few pieces remain, which often decides a close finish. Guarding your back row to deny the opponent easy kings, and racing your own men toward promotion when the path is safe, round out the fundamentals that turn a beginner into a genuinely tough opponent.

How to Improve Your Game

The fastest way to improve is to play against a stronger opponent and pay attention to how you lose. The Hard computer level here is a good sparring partner: it searches many moves ahead, values kings, and will immediately punish an undefended piece, so every loss teaches you something specific about what you overlooked. Start on Easy to internalise the forced-capture patterns, then step up as your confidence grows.

Beyond raw play, the key habit is to look before you leap: before making a move, check whether it leaves a piece where it can be jumped, and whether the capture it forces actually helps you or sets up a bigger reply for your opponent. Because captures are mandatory, thinking one move deeper — “if I take here, what am I then forced to allow?” — is where most improvement comes from. Play regularly, review your losses, and the tactical eye for multi-jumps and traps develops naturally.