Free Online Checkers Game
The game-play is pretty simple in this online checkers
game. Click on red checker with your left mouse button and
then point to the square where you would like to move the piece.
The Actual Board Game Rules of Checkers
As in all checker variations, the game is played by two
people, on opposite sides of a playing board, alternating moves.
One player has dark pieces, and the other has light pieces. Most
commonly, the board alternates between red and black squares.
Pieces move diagonally and pieces of the opponent are captured
by jumping over them.
How to play checkers:
- Board The board is an 8×8 grid, with
alternating dark and light squares, called a checkerboard
(in the US, in reference to its checkered pattern, also the
source of the name checkers). The playable surface consists
of the 32 dark squares only. A consequence of this is that,
from each player's perspective, the left and right corners
encourage different strategies.
- Pieces The pieces are usually made of
wood and are flat and cylindrical. They are invariably split
into one darker and one lighter color. Traditionally, these
colors are red and white. There are two kinds of pieces:
"men" and "kings". Kings are differentiated as consisting of
two normal pieces of the same color, stacked one on top of
the other. Often indentations are added to the pieces to aid
stacking.
- Starting Position Each player starts
with 12 pieces on the three rows closest to their own side,
as shown in the diagram. The row closest to each player is
called the "crownhead" or "kings row". The black (darker
color) side moves first.
- How to Move There are two ways to move a
piece: simply sliding a piece diagonally forwards (also
diagonally backwards in the case of kings) to an adjacent
and unoccupied dark square, or "jumping" one of the
opponent's pieces. In this case, one piece "jumps over" the
other, provided there is a vacant square on the opposite
side for it to land on. Again, a man (uncrowned piece) can
only jump diagonally forwards, and a king can also move
diagonally backwards. A piece that is jumped is captured and
removed from the board. Multiple-jump moves are possible if,
when the jumping piece lands, there is another piece that
can be jumped. Jumping is mandatory and cannot be passed up
to make a non-jumping move, nor can fewer than the maximum
jumps possible be taken in a multiple-jump move. When there
is more than one way for a player to jump, one may choose
which sequence to make, not necessarily the sequence that
will result in the most amount of captures. However, one
must make all the captures in that sequence. (Under
traditional checker rules jumping is not mandatory. If it is
not done, the opponent may either force the move to be
reversed, huff the piece or carry on regardless.)
- Kings If a player's piece moves into the kings
row on the opposing player's side of the board, that piece
is said to be "crowned" (or often "kinged" in the US),
becoming a "king" and gaining the ability to move both
forwards and backwards. If a player's piece jumps into the
kings row, the move terminates (it cannot jump out (as in a
multiple-jump move) until that move has ended and the piece
has been crowned).
- How the Game Ends A player wins by capturing all of the
opposing player's pieces, or by leaving the opposing player
with no legal moves.
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