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Background

Checkers (American English), also known as draughts  is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque.^[1] The term “checkers” derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas “draughts” derives from the verb “to draw” or “to move”.^[2]

The most popular forms of checkers in Anglophone countries are American checkers (also called English draughts), which is played on an 8×8 checkerboard; Russian draughts, Turkish draughts both on an 8×8 board, and International draughts, played on a 10×10 board – the latter is widely played in many countries worldwide. There are many other variants played on 8×8 boards. Canadian checkers and Singaporean/Malaysian checkers (also locally known as dum) are played on a 12×12 board.

American checkers was weakly solved in 2007 by a team of Canadian computer scientists led by Jonathan Schaeffer. From the standard starting position, perfect play by each side would result in a draw.

Checkers Game General rules

Checkers is played by two opponents on opposite sides of the game board. One player has dark pieces (usually black); the other has light pieces (usually white or red). Black moves first, then players alternate turns. A player cannot move the opponent’s pieces. A move consists of moving a piece diagonally to an adjacent unoccupied square. If the adjacent square contains an opponent’s piece, and the square immediately beyond it is vacant, the piece may be captured (and removed from the game) by jumping over it.

Only the dark squares of the checkerboard are used. A piece can only move diagonally into an unoccupied square. When capturing an opponent’s piece is possible, capturing is mandatory in most official rules. If the player does not capture, the other player can remove the opponent’s piece as a penalty (or muffin), and where there are two or more such positions the player forfeits pieces that cannot be moved (although some rule variations make capturing optional). In almost all variants, the player without pieces remaining, or who cannot move due to being blocked, loses the game.