Checkers Rules

Checkers looks almost trivially simple on an empty board — twelve pieces each, one direction of travel, one kind of move — but the mandatory-capture rule underneath that simplicity is exactly what gives the game its real tactical bite: you're often not choosing whether to capture, only which capture to make.

Setup

Checkers is played on the dark squares of a standard 8×8 checkered board. Each player starts with twelve pieces, placed on the twelve dark squares of the three rows closest to them. Standard American rules put the double-corner (the dark square) at each player's near right.

Moving

A regular piece moves diagonally forward, one square at a time, onto an empty dark square — it can never move sideways, backward, or onto a light square. Turns alternate, and the player using the darker or otherwise agreed color typically moves first.

Capturing, and why it's mandatory

A piece captures an adjacent enemy piece by jumping diagonally over it into an empty square immediately beyond, removing the jumped piece from the board. In standard American checkers, capturing is mandatory whenever a legal capture is available — a player cannot simply decline to jump and make an ordinary move instead if a capture exists. If a single jump leads into a position where a further jump is available with the same piece, the player must continue jumping with that piece until no further jump is possible, all within the same turn.

Kinging

A regular piece that reaches the farthest row on the opponent's side of the board is "kinged," usually marked by stacking a second piece on top of it. A king can move diagonally forward or backward, one square at a time (in standard rules), and can capture in either direction as well — kings are the pieces that actually threaten the board once the opening rows have thinned out, and protecting your own back row long enough to avoid an early enemy king is a core part of standard opening strategy.

Winning

A player wins by capturing every one of the opponent's pieces, or by leaving the opponent with no legal move at all (every remaining piece blocked in on all diagonals) — a blockade win is rarer than a capture win but entirely legitimate, and it's a real defensive technique late in a lopsided game.

American checkers versus international draughts

The version most Americans grow up playing is a specific ruleset — 8×8 board, single-square king moves, mandatory capture — but it isn't the only one played worldwide. International draughts is played on a larger 10×10 board with 20 pieces per side, and its kings ("flying kings") can move and capture across any number of empty squares along a diagonal in one move rather than one square at a time, which makes the endgame noticeably more dynamic. Several other regional variants (Turkish draughts, played on orthogonal rather than diagonal lines, is a particularly large departure) exist as well; none of them shares rules directly with American checkers beyond the basic diagonal-capture concept.

Basic strategy: controlling the center and the back row

Strong checkers play centers on two ideas that show up in nearly every serious game. Controlling the board's center columns gives a piece more possible diagonal moves than one stuck along the edge, where it can only ever move in one diagonal direction rather than two. Keeping pieces on your own back row for as long as reasonably possible denies the opponent an easy path to king a piece, since a king can only be created by reaching that row — sacrificing back-row control too early, chasing an aggressive capture elsewhere on the board, is a common way even an otherwise-winning position turns around.

Origins: an ancient lineage with a documented modern form

Games resembling checkers with diagonal capture on a checkered board date back centuries, with versions recorded in medieval Europe evolving from earlier board games; the specific ruleset now called American or English checkers (or "draughts" in British English) was standardized in its modern mandatory-capture form by the 19th century. Checkers holds a particular claim to fame in computing history: it was one of the first board games where a computer program (Arthur Samuel's checkers-playing program, developed at IBM starting in the 1950s) demonstrated genuine machine learning, and the game was later fully "solved" by researchers in 2007, proving that perfect play by both sides ends in a draw.

Questions that come up mid-game

If a player has a choice between two different available jumps, are they required to choose the one that captures more pieces? No — mandatory capture only requires making a legal jump, not the maximum-value jump available; a player can legally choose the smaller capture if it serves their position better, as long as they capture something.

Can a regular piece capture backward, toward its own starting side of the board? No — only kings can move and capture backward; a regular (uncrowned) piece is restricted to forward diagonal moves and captures for as long as it stays uncrowned.