Checkers

Play checkers against the computer — take every jump you are offered, crown a king on the back row, and leave your opponent with nowhere to go.

Logic

Play

How to play

  1. You play the pale pieces at the bottom. Tap one to lift it — the squares it can reach are marked with a dot.
  2. Pieces move one diagonal step forward onto an empty dark square. The light squares are never used.
  3. To capture, hop diagonally over a touching enemy piece and land on the empty square directly behind it. The piece you jumped comes off the board.
  4. If a jump is available anywhere on the board, you have to play a jump — the board will only offer you those moves.
  5. If the square beyond your landing spot has another piece to take, the jump continues in the same turn, and a chain of two or three is where most games are decided.
  6. Reach the far row and your piece is crowned a king, marked with a gold ring. Kings move and jump backwards as well as forwards.
  7. You win when your opponent has no legal move left — either because their pieces are gone, or because every one of them is blocked.

What it trains

  • Trains looking one move further ahead — the compulsory jump means your opponent’s reply is often forced, and seeing that is a skill that arrives with practice
  • A short, complete game: a few minutes from first move to last, with a clear finish rather than an endless score
  • No ads, no account, no clock, and four opponents so there is always one you can beat and one you cannot yet

Full rules

The board and the pieces

Twelve pieces each, on the dark squares of the three rows nearest you. Only the dark squares are ever used, which is why the board is played on a diagonal: a piece that starts on dark stays on dark for the whole game. An ordinary piece — a “man” — moves one step diagonally forward onto an empty square, and that is its entire move until it is crowned.

A capture is compulsory

This is the rule that turns checkers from a race into a game. If you have a jump available you must take it; you may not quietly develop somewhere else. So a piece offered to you is often not a gift but a lever — giving one up can force your opponent’s reply, and a player who sees two moves further can hand over a piece in order to take two back. When you have more than one jump available you may choose which, but you must jump.

Chains

After a jump, if the piece that just landed can jump again, it must, and the turn continues until it cannot. A single move can therefore clear three pieces off the board in one sweep. Chains are worth looking for before you move rather than after: the square you land on is what decides whether the next hop exists.

Kings

A man that reaches the opponent’s back row is crowned and becomes a king, which moves and captures backwards as well as forwards. Two details matter. A man crowned in the middle of a chain stops there — it does not carry on jumping as a king in the same turn. And the king here steps one square, as it does in the American and English game; the king that slides any distance along a diagonal belongs to international draughts, played on a larger board.

How a game ends

You win when your opponent cannot move — usually because you have taken all their pieces, but just as often because the ones they have left are blocked. That second route is worth remembering when you are behind on material: a cornered king with nowhere legal to go loses just as completely as an empty board.

Choosing an opponent

Four settings, and they differ in how far ahead the computer looks rather than in whether it cheats — it sees the same board you do. The easy-going one considers only its own next move, which means it will walk into simple traps and is the right place to learn the shape of a chain. The sharp one looks several moves deep and will set traps of its own. Change it whenever you like; the next game starts fresh.

The one that used to come with Windows

These are the same rules as the Checkers that shipped with older versions of Windows and the ones that used to be on MSN and Yahoo — the American game, compulsory captures, kings that step one square. This one runs in the browser instead of as an installed program, so it works on Windows 11, on a Mac, and on a phone, with nothing to download and no account to make.

Play Checkers free online against one computer opponent — full screen, no download, no ads and no sign-up. Twelve pieces each on the dark squares, moving one diagonal step at a time towards the far side of the board. Jump a piece and it comes off; land on the last row and yours is crowned a king that can move backwards as well. The catch that makes checkers a game rather than a race is that a jump is compulsory: if you can take, you must, so half of playing well is arranging a position where your opponent’s only legal move is the one that loses them two pieces. Four opponents to choose from, from an easy-going one that will let you find your feet to a sharp one that sees several moves ahead. A game takes a few minutes.

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