Checkers facts for kids
Starting position for American checkers on an 8×8 checkerboard; Black (red) moves first.
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| Years active | at least 5,000 |
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| Genre(s) |
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| Players | 2 |
| Playing time | Casual games usually last 10 to 30 minutes; tournament games last anywhere from about 60 minutes to 3 hours or more. |
| Random chance | None |
| Skill(s) required | Strategy, tactics |
| Synonym(s) |
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Checkers, also known as draughts in British English, is a classic two-player board game. It is an abstract strategy game where luck does not play any role. Players move matching pieces across a checkered board. The main goal is to capture all of your opponent's pieces by jumping over them. You can also win by blocking your rival so they cannot make any moves.
People have enjoyed different versions of this mind sport for thousands of years. Today, you can play standard American checkers, try big boards in international draughts, or even play online using mobile apps.
Contents
How to Play Checkers and Understand the Game Rules
Checkers is played on a board of dark and light squares. Only the dark squares are used during the game. Each player controls their own set of colored pieces. One person gets dark pieces, while the other plays with light pieces. Dark pieces move first, and then players take turns. Every piece moves forward diagonally by one square at a time.
Capturing is the most exciting action in the game. If an opponent's piece sits diagonally next to yours, and the space behind it is empty, you must jump over it. The jumped piece is removed from the board. If your piece lands in a spot where it can make another jump, it keeps going in a multi-jump sequence. In most official rule sets, making a jump is mandatory. If you do not capture when you can, you break the rules. A player wins when the rival has no pieces left or has no legal moves remaining.
Understanding the Playing Pieces on the Board
The Regular Man
At the start of the match, every piece is an uncrowned "man". A man can only move forward into open diagonal squares. In American checkers and Spanish draughts, standard men can only jump forward. In other styles, like Russian draughts and international draughts, regular men are allowed to jump backward to capture pieces.
Becoming a King
When a man crosses the entire board and lands on the farthest row, called the crown head, something special happens. The piece earns a promotion and becomes a king. The player crowns it by placing another piece on top.
A king gains extra power because it can move both forward and backward diagonally. In some international versions, kings become "flying kings." A flying king can slide across multiple open squares in one turn. In standard American checkers, kings move just one square at a time, but they still have the advantage of reversing direction.
The Long History of Checkers and Board Game Ancestors
Ancient Roots and Early Board Games
People have loved strategy games since ancient times. Archaeologists exploring ancient ruins have uncovered game boards that are thousands of years old. In the British Museum, visitors can view ancient boards from ancient Egyptian tombs. Games like these were played during the time of Pharaoh Hatshepsut.
The Ancient Greeks and the Romans also enjoyed tactical grid games. They played contests called Petteia and Latrunculi. While these games did not have modern jumping rules, they inspired early inventors to create new tabletop pastimes.
From Ancient Alquerque to the Checkered Board
The true ancestor of modern checkers is a game called Alquerque. It was played on a five-by-five grid of lines. An Arab scholar mentioned the game during the tenth century in a book named Kitab al-Aghani. Later, the Moors carried this game into Europe. King Alfonso X of Castile helped document its rules in 1283 in his famous book, the Libro de los juegos.
In Alquerque, pieces jumped over rivals to capture them, just like in checkers. Around the year 1100, clever players in southern France moved this game onto an eight-by-eight checkerboard. They restricted pieces to diagonal paths. This new style spread across Europe under the name "dames." In 1756, an English mathematician named William Payne published the first English rulebook, featuring an introduction by writer Samuel Johnson.
Unique Checkers Variations Around the World
Different cultures around the world invented their own fascinating rules for checkers:
- International draughts: Played on a large 10×10 board with twenty pieces per side and powerful flying kings.
- Turkish draughts: Pieces move straight forward and sideways along lines instead of diagonally.
- Canadian checkers: This big version uses an enormous 12×12 board with thirty pieces per side.
- Frisian draughts: A clever game where pieces jump diagonally, horizontally, and vertically.
- Bashni: A Russian column game where captured pieces are placed underneath the captor to build tall towers.
- Poddavki: A fun "giveaway" version where the real winner is the first player to lose all their pieces.
Supercomputers and Checkers Technology
Checkers played a historic role in the birth of video games and artificial intelligence. In 1952, a British computer scientist named Christopher Strachey created one of the very first video games by programming checkers on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer. Soon after, computer scientist Arthur Samuel created programs that could learn and get better through practice.
In 2007, Canadian computer scientists led by Jonathan Schaeffer finished a project named Chinook. Chinook used dozens of computers over nearly twenty years to calculate every single move in checkers. They discovered that if two players play a perfect game without making any errors, checkers will always end in a draw. This proved that checkers is a mathematically solved game.
Images for kids
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Men in medieval clothing playing checkers
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Dameo starting position
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Scott M Savage's checkers (1983) the first robot game
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Starting position in international draughts, which is played on a 10×10 board
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Starting position in Canadian draughts
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Board and starting position in Turkish draughts and Armenian draughts
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Starting position in Italian and Portuguese draughts
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Bashni
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See Also
In Spanish: Damas para niños
- Board game
- Chess
- Fanorona
- Chinese checkers
