Setup
Each player takes twelve pieces and fills the dark squares of the three rows nearest them, leaving the two middle rows empty. Black — or whichever colour you agree on — moves first.
CLASSIC GAMES
Play checkers online with friends
Also known as Draughts, English draughts
Checkers — draughts, if you grew up outside North America — is the classic everyone already knows the rules to, which makes it the easiest multiplayer board game to start a table with. Place the board, drop the pieces on, and go.
Ready to play
A finished Checkers pack, ready to play
The classic game of checkers
- 2 players
- Published by SkippyNumNums
- MIT licence
- Players
- 2 players
- Play time
- 10-30 minutes
- Learning curve
- Learn it in two minutes
- What you need
- A browser and a free account
How to play Checkers
Checkers rules at a glance
- Board: eight by eight, dark squares only. Twelve pieces each, filling the three rows nearest you.
- Move: one square diagonally forward, onto an empty dark square.
- Capture: jump the piece diagonally ahead of you into the empty square beyond it, and keep jumping while the chain continues.
- Crowning: a piece that reaches the far row becomes a king and moves and jumps backwards as well as forwards.
- Winning: your opponent has no pieces left, or no legal move.
- House rule to settle first: whether a capture is compulsory when one is available.
Moving and jumping
Pieces move one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square. If an opposing piece sits diagonally ahead with an empty square directly beyond it, you jump over it and remove it from the board. If that landing square lets you jump again, you keep going in the same turn.
Most groups play that a capture is compulsory when one is available. It is worth saying out loud before the first move which way you are playing it, because the game is noticeably different either way.
Kings
A piece that reaches the far row is crowned — stack a captured piece on top of it, or use one of the modelled crowned pieces. Kings move and jump diagonally both forwards and backwards, which is usually what decides the endgame.
Winning
You win when your opponent has no pieces left, or no legal move. A game where neither side can make progress is a draw, and most players agree one rather than shuffle kings forever.
Checkers strategy
Checkers takes two minutes to learn and considerably longer to stop losing at. None of this is enforced or suggested by the table — it is just what tends to decide games.
- Hold your back row as long as you can. Those four squares are the only thing stopping an enemy piece from being crowned, and a king usually beats whatever you gained by pushing them forward.
- Advance in a connected block rather than one runner. A piece with a friend diagonally behind it can be jumped, but the jump is answered immediately.
- The side columns are safe and slow: a piece on the edge can never be jumped, and it also has half the moves. Park a piece there to hold a position, not to win one.
- Trade when you are ahead. Every even swap makes a one-piece lead a larger share of what is left on the board, and endgames with kings reward the player with more of them.
- Before you move, look for the reply chain rather than the single jump. Most games are lost to a capture that sets up a double or triple, not to the obvious one.
Checkers and draughts variants
Outside North America the game is draughts, and the family is much larger than the version most people learn. Because DiceyTable enforces no rules at all, a variant is not something we have to build — you agree which one you are playing and move the pieces accordingly. Everything below uses the same eight-by-eight board and the same pieces.
- American checkers / English draughtsThe game described above — twelve pieces a side, men forward only, kings both ways. It is what the board and the published pack are laid out for.
- Pool checkersSame board and setup, but men may capture backwards and a king slides any distance along its diagonal.
- Brazilian draughtsInternational rules squeezed onto an eight-by-eight board: flying kings, backwards captures, and the largest available capture is the one you must take.
- Italian draughtsBoard turned a quarter turn, men may not capture kings, and where several captures are legal the biggest one is compulsory.
- Turkish draughts (dama)Sixteen pieces a side on the second and third rows, moving and capturing orthogonally rather than diagonally, across all sixty-four squares.
The built-in board prints an eight-by-eight grid and the published pack ships the same, so international draughts (10x10) and Canadian draughts (12x12) are the two this page cannot honestly claim: they need a board you bring yourself, which is a mod-editor job rather than something the table does for you. And in every variant here the rules live in your heads — nothing on the table forces a capture or blocks an illegal move.
What the Checkers pack looks like
Shots marked “the real table” are captures of DiceyTable running this pack. The rest is the pack’s own promotional artwork — it is lovely, and it is not what the renderer draws.
Or build your own Checkers set
DiceyTable gives you the physical game — the board, the pieces and real 3D physics — not a rules engine. Nobody's move is validated and no illegal move is blocked, so house rules and variants cost you nothing. It runs in the browser with nothing to install, it is free, and you share a link to bring people in.
- Checkers boardAn 8x8 board with the squares actually printed on it.
- Black checkersModelled pieces with a crown detail for kings.
- Red checkersThe second set. A white set is there too if you prefer it.
Building a set by hand is the alternative, not the requirement — the pack above is already laid out. Either way every player needs a free account, and there is nothing to download on any device.
What it does not do
The rules are still yours to enforce, with the pack or without it. The rest of this list is about building a set from the built-in library — the Checkers pack ships its own board.
- Nothing enforces compulsory capture, or anything else. Agree your house rules first — the table will let you play either way.
- There is no AI opponent. Bring a friend.
- You and your friends enforce the rules between you, exactly as you would sitting at a real table.
Play Checkers now
Open the pack, invite your group with a link, and start playing. Free, in the browser, with nothing to install.