Objective

Checkers is played on the 64 dark squares of an 8×8 board between two sides, traditionally called Red and Black. You win by capturing all of your opponent's pieces, or by leaving them with no legal move on their turn (either because they have no pieces left or every remaining piece is completely blocked).

Board & Starting Setup

Each side starts with 12 pieces ("men") placed on the dark squares of their three closest rows, leaving the middle two rows empty. Pieces only ever occupy dark squares for the entire game — a piece never legally lands on a light square. On this site, Red moves first.

How Pieces Move

A regular piece ("man") moves one square diagonally forward only, onto an empty adjacent dark square — it can never move backward or sideways while it's still a man. "Forward" means toward the opponent's edge of the board: Red moves toward the top, Black moves toward the bottom.

Captures (Jumps)

A piece captures by jumping diagonally over an adjacent enemy piece into the empty square immediately beyond it, removing the jumped piece from the board. Unlike regular moves, a man can capture in any of the four diagonal directions — forward or backward — as long as the landing square is empty. This is the standard American/English checkers rule; some regional variants restrict men to forward captures only. If your preferred rules only allow forward captures until a piece is kinged, toggle off "Men can capture backward" in the Checkers panel on the game page.

Mandatory Capture

If a capture is available anywhere on the board for the side to move, a capture must be played — you cannot make a quiet non-capturing move while a jump is on offer. If more than one piece can capture, you choose which one to move, but once you commit to a piece, any further jump that same piece can make must also be taken. This is on by default; if you'd rather captures be optional, there's a "Mandatory captures" checkbox in the Checkers panel on the game page that turns it off.

Multi-Jumps (Double and Triple Captures)

If, after landing from a jump, the same piece has another capture available, it must keep jumping — a single turn can chain together two, three, or occasionally more captures with one piece, and every jumped piece is removed only once the whole sequence is confirmed.

In the example above, Black's man has a capture available in two different directions from its landing square, so both Red pieces come off the board in one turn — Black doesn't get to stop after the first jump and doesn't get to choose a quieter move instead.

Kings

When a man reaches the far row (the row furthest from where it started), it is crowned a king, marked with a ★ on this site. A king can move and capture one square in any of the four diagonal directions — forward or backward — making it far more mobile than a man. One important exception: if a man reaches the back row in the middle of a multi-jump, the turn ends immediately at that point, even if the newly-crowned king could technically keep capturing. It has to wait until its next turn to use its new king moves.

Winning & No Legal Moves

A game ends the moment one side has no legal move available on their turn — either every piece they have left is boxed in with no open move or jump, or they have no pieces left at all. That side loses. There's no check or checkmate to track, and no draw-by-move-count rule on this site's implementation — a game continues until one side is unable to move.

How This Differs From International Draughts

This site implements standard American/English checkers, not international (Turkish or Polish) draughts. The main differences if you've played the international variant: this version uses an 8×8 board with 12 pieces per side rather than 10×10 with 20 per side, kings here move only one square at a time ("straight kings") instead of flying any distance down an open diagonal, and men can capture backward here, which isn't universal across regional rule sets.

Ready to try it? Play checkers now against the computer or a friend on the same device.