How to Play Checkers
Checkers may be the first real strategy game most of us ever played. The board is simple, the pieces all look alike, and the rules fit on a postcard. Yet a good game of checkers is full of traps, sacrifices and narrow escapes. This page explains the American rules, also known as English draughts, step by step and exactly as our free online checkers game plays them. If you learned slightly different rules as a child, have a look at our page of checkers variations and house rules too.
What You Need
- A board of 64 squares, 8 by 8, in two alternating colors.
- 24 round pieces, often called checkers: 12 of a dark color and 12 of a light color. Sets come in black and red, black and white, or brown and cream; on this site they are simply Dark and Light.
- Two players. A game usually takes 15 to 45 minutes.
Setting Up the Board
Only the dark squares are used, so each side plays on 32 squares in all. Turn the board so that each player has a dark square in the bottom-left corner. (An easy way to remember it: "dark on the left".) If the board is turned the wrong way, the pieces will not line up properly.
Each player puts their 12 pieces on the dark squares of the three rows closest to them, four pieces in each row. The two rows in the middle start empty. Every piece at the start is an ordinary piece, which is called a man.
Taking Turns
In the standard rules Dark moves first. After that the players take turns, and each turn you move exactly one piece. You may not pass. If you cannot make any move at all on your turn, you lose (see "Winning" below).
How a Man Moves
A man moves one square diagonally forward, toward the opponent's side, onto an empty dark square. It never moves straight ahead, never sideways and, while it is still a man, never backward.
A man in the middle of the board therefore has at most two moves: forward to the left or forward to the right. A man on the edge of the board has only one, because the other diagonal runs off the board.
Jumping (Capturing)
You capture by jumping. If one of your men has an opponent's piece diagonally in front of it, and the square just beyond that piece is empty, your man can jump over it into the empty square. The piece you jumped is taken off the board.
Jumps are required
This is the rule that surprises people most: if you can jump, you must. You may not make an ordinary move instead. If several of your pieces can jump, you choose which one. In old-fashioned home games a player who missed a jump sometimes had the piece "huffed" (removed) as a penalty; under today's rules, and in this game, a jump simply has to be made, and our board only lets you pick the pieces that can jump.
Multiple jumps
If the jumping piece lands on a square from which it can jump again, it must keep jumping in the same turn, and it can change direction from one jump to the next. A double or triple jump counts as one move. The turn ends only when the piece has no more jumps to make.
When you have a choice between different jumps, or between different routes in the middle of a multiple jump, you may choose any of them. You do not have to pick the one that takes the most pieces, but whichever route you start, you must finish it. (Some families play that you must take the most pieces; that is a house rule you can switch on in Settings.)
Worked example: a double jump. Your man stands near your side of the board. Diagonally in front of it, up and to the left, is a light man with an empty square behind it. Beyond that empty square, diagonally up and to the right, is another light man, again with an empty square behind it. Your man jumps the first piece, lands on the empty square, and from there must jump the second piece as well. Both light men come off the board, and it all counts as one move. On this page you tap your man, then the first landing square, then the second; or simply tap the final square, because there is only one way to get there.
Kings
When a man reaches the row furthest from you (your opponent's back row), it is crowned and becomes a king. At a real table the opponent puts a second checker on top of it; on this board a king is drawn as a double piece with a crown symbol.
A king moves one square diagonally in any direction, forward or backward, and it can jump forward or backward too, including changing direction during a multiple jump. A king is worth roughly one and a half men, so getting one is a big step toward winning.
Worked example: crowned in the middle of a jump. Your man jumps onto the far row and is crowned. From that square, a king could jump another piece backward. But the rule is that a man crowned during a jump stops there: crowning ends the move. Your new king will have to wait for your next turn, and by then your opponent may have moved the piece out of danger.
Winning the Game
You win when, on your opponent's turn, either of these is true:
- your opponent has no pieces left, or
- your opponent still has pieces but none of them can move (they are all blocked).
A player may also give up (resign) at any time, which counts as a win for the other side. On this page the Resign button does that.
Draws
Plenty of well-played checkers games end in a draw. A game is drawn when:
- Both players agree. Either player may offer a draw on their turn; the other can accept or play on. Against our computer, tap Offer a Draw; it agrees unless it thinks it is ahead.
- The same position comes up three times with the same player to move. Two kings chasing each other around a corner forever are going nowhere, so the game stops.
- Nothing changes for too long. If each player makes 40 moves in a row without any jump and without moving a man (so only kings are moving), the game is a draw. Some families use a different count; you can choose 25, 40 or 50 moves in Settings.
The Rules at a Glance
| Piece | Moves | Jumps |
|---|---|---|
| Man | One square diagonally forward | Diagonally forward only; must keep jumping if it can |
| King | One square diagonally forward or backward | Diagonally forward or backward; must keep jumping if it can |
| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| Your opponent has no pieces left | You win |
| Your opponent cannot move on their turn | You win |
| A player resigns | The other player wins |
| Both players agree | Draw |
| Same position three times, same player to move | Draw |
| 40 moves each with no jump and no man moving | Draw |
A Short Example Game Opening
Here is how the first few moves of a game often go, described in words. Dark starts by moving a man from the third row up one square toward the middle, usually one of the center men. Light answers the same way, moving a man toward the center from its own side. Now the two front lines are close. If Dark next moves a man so that it stands diagonally in front of a light man with an empty square behind it, Light must jump it. That is not always a mistake: if Dark has a piece ready to jump straight back, it is simply a trade, one piece each. But if nothing can jump back, Dark has given away a piece for nothing.
That is why the most useful habit in checkers is the simplest one: before every move, look at the square your piece is moving to, and ask whether it can be jumped there. Then ask whether the square it leaves behind opens a jump for your opponent somewhere else.
Common Questions About the Rules
Can a man jump backward?
Not in American checkers. Only kings jump backward. (In some other countries' games men can, which is one of the differences covered on our variations page.)
Can a king move more than one square?
Not in American checkers. Kings move one square at a time, in any diagonal direction. "Flying kings" that slide along the diagonal belong to other versions of draughts.
Can I jump my own piece?
No. You can only jump your opponent's pieces, and only one at a time, landing on an empty square each time.
Can the same piece be jumped twice in one move?
No. Each piece can be jumped only once. The jumped pieces are removed when the move is finished.
Once you have the rules, the checkers strategy guide explains how to keep your pieces safe, set little traps and win the endgame. If you enjoy games of pure skill with nothing hidden, you might also like to try our other board games.