How to Play Checkers: Rules, Kings and Winning Tips

Checkers is easy to start and surprisingly deep once you play a few games. The whole game comes down to three ideas: pieces move diagonally, you capture by jumping, and a piece that reaches the far side becomes a king. This page explains the standard American rules step by step, with the game above so you can try each one as you read.

The board and setup

Checkers is played on an 8×8 board of 64 squares in two colours. Only the 32 dark squares are used. Place the board so each player has a dark square in their bottom-left corner.

Each player has 12 pieces of one colour. They start on the dark squares of the three rows nearest that player, which leaves the two middle rows empty. The goal is to capture all of your opponent’s pieces or leave them with no legal move.

How pieces move

A regular piece, called a man, moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square. It never moves straight ahead, sideways or, until it is crowned, backwards. Players take turns and must move on every turn.

How to capture

If an opponent’s piece sits diagonally in front of yours and the square just beyond it is empty, you jump over it into that empty square and remove the captured piece from the board.

• Captures are compulsory. If any of your pieces can jump, you must make a jump instead of a quiet move.
• Keep jumping. If the piece that just jumped can jump again from its new square, it must continue in the same turn. A chain of two or three jumps can change a game in one move.
• You choose between captures. When several jumps are possible, you may pick any of them. You do not have to take the one that captures the most pieces.

An older house rule called “huffing”, where a piece that failed to capture was removed as a penalty, is not part of the modern game. The capture is simply forced.

Kings

When a man reaches the far row, it is crowned and becomes a king. In a real set you stack a second piece on top; in this game a crown appears.

• A king moves one square diagonally in any direction, forwards or backwards.
• A king captures in any direction too, and can mix directions in a chain of jumps.
• A man that is crowned in the middle of a jump stops there. It cannot keep jumping as a king until its next turn.

How to win, and draws

You win when your opponent has no pieces left, or when it is their turn and none of their pieces can move. A game where neither side can make progress is a draw. Players can agree to a draw, and this game declares one after 40 moves for each side without a capture or a regular piece moving.

Strategy for beginners

• Control the centre. Pieces in the middle squares have more moves and are harder to trap than pieces on the edge.
• Keep your back row. As long as your home row is occupied, your opponent cannot crown a king. Hold it until the board opens up.
• Move in pairs. A piece with a friend directly behind it cannot be jumped from the front.
• Use forced captures. Because a jump must be taken, you can offer one piece to pull an opponent’s piece into a spot where you jump two back. This is called a shot.
• Trade when you are ahead. With one more piece than your opponent, swapping pieces one for one makes your advantage bigger.
• Get a king, then attack from behind. Men cannot capture backwards, so a king behind enemy lines picks off pieces they cannot defend.

Practise against the computer

The game above uses exactly these rules and highlights every piece that can move, which makes forced captures easy to see. Start on Easy to learn the moves, move up to Medium when you win most games, and try Hard once you can plan a shot. You can also choose 2 Players to teach a friend on the same screen. For the full game page with every option, go to Checkers.