Online Checkers Game
Play American checkers against a casual computer or a friend on the same device, with forced-jump guidance and repeatable computer replies.{{ turnText }}
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Moves and rules
Replay seed: {{ identity.seed }}
Men move and capture forward. Kings move and capture both ways. Every capture is compulsory; continue with the same piece. Crowning ends your turn.
Automatic draws: three repeated positions, or 40 moves each without a capture or a man advancing. Undo restores your last turn and the computer reply.
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No moves yet.
A player can have more checkers on the board and still lose because none of them can move. In American checkers, also called English draughts, two players compete on the 32 dark squares of an 8-by-8 board, starting with 12 pieces each. Winning means capturing every opposing piece or leaving the opponent without a legal move, not reaching a points total.
- Man
- An uncrowned checker that moves diagonally forward toward the opponent’s back row.
- King
- A checker promoted by reaching that back row. It can move diagonally backward as well as forward.
- Capture or jump
- A move over an adjacent opposing piece into the empty square immediately beyond it. The jumped piece is removed.
Captures are compulsory. When any checker has a legal jump, making an ordinary move is not an alternative. A landing square can lead to another capture, and that continuation belongs to the same piece. Several jumps can therefore form one turn, with the opponent waiting until the sequence is finished.
Compulsory replies make sacrifices possible. Offering a checker may draw an opponent onto a square where another capture becomes available. That plan must account for every legal capture the opponent could choose, not just the reply you hope to see. Before advancing a piece, the useful questions are which jumps become available and where the capturing checker will finish.
Reaching the far row is worth planning for because a king can retreat and approach a capture from either direction. It can still be captured by a man, and it cannot slide along an entire diagonal. American checkers also ends a turn at the moment of crowning, so a newly promoted piece must wait before using its backward movement.
How to Use This Tool:
The default setup is an untimed standard game with you playing Red against the casual computer.
- Choose Opponent and Your side. Against Computer · casual, choosing White gives the computer the first move. With Two players · same device, both players take turns on the same device; Your side sets the board’s orientation rather than restricting who can move.
- Choose Position. Standard · 12 pieces each starts a full game, while Practice · double jump starts a short capture exercise.
For the double-jump exercise, play Red or choose two-player mode. Playing White against the computer lets the computer complete Red’s winning sequence immediately.
- Enter a Replay seed or retain checkers-1, then select Start match. The seed must contain 1 to 96 characters after surrounding spaces are removed. If Start match is disabled, replace a blank or spaces-only seed with nonblank text.
- Select a ringed checker, then a marked destination by clicking or tapping the squares. With the board focused, use the arrow keys to move focus and Enter or Space to select. Press Escape to clear a selection before a jump sequence begins. Follow the turn message after each jump.
Capture required means an ordinary move is unavailable. If the message says to continue jumping from a numbered square, use that same checker and its marked destination; choosing another piece will not end the sequence.
Select Pause or press P while the board has focus to hold the position, then choose Resume to continue. Switching tabs or moving to another window also pauses the match. From the pause menu, Resign match concedes for the color whose turn it is. Restart starts over with the same setup and seed.
After a result, Replay same seed starts the same setup again; it does not play the recorded moves for you. New seed keeps the setup but changes the seed used for computer replies. Choose Change setup to return to the opponent, side, position, and seed choices.
Interpreting Results:
Red and White above the board show pieces remaining. A crown marks a king, but that king still counts as one piece. Rings and marked destinations identify legal choices, not recommended moves or an assessment of who is winning.
The history under Moves and rules records numbered squares. An en dash marks an ordinary move, a multiplication sign marks a capture, and (king) marks promotion. At the end, Steps played counts individual board moves by both colors, including each jump within a sequence. It is not a count of complete turns or a performance score.
Read the explanation below Red wins, White wins, or Draw. A win may come from blocking rather than capturing every piece, and a draw identifies repetition or lack of progress rather than declaring that the piece counts are equal.
Technical Details:
A turn consists of one ordinary diagonal move or a compulsory capture sequence. Each jump changes the board before the next jump is determined, so legality depends on both the adjacent opposing piece and the empty square beyond it.
Rule Core
| Rule | Exact condition |
|---|---|
| Starting position | The playable squares are numbered 1 to 32. Standard games place Red on 1 to 12 and White on 21 to 32. Red moves first. |
| Men | An ordinary move goes one square diagonally forward into an empty square. A capture crosses one diagonally adjacent opponent forward and lands in the empty square immediately beyond. |
| Kings | An ordinary move goes one square diagonally forward or backward. A capture crosses one adjacent opponent in either direction and lands immediately beyond. Kings do not slide through several empty squares. |
| Capture priority | Any available capture rules out all ordinary moves for that color. When several jumps are legal, any may be chosen; the route taking the most pieces is not compulsory. |
| Capture continuation | After a jump, the crossed piece disappears. If the same checker can capture again, it must continue, choosing among its legal jumps. Another checker cannot take over the turn. |
| Crowning exception | A Red man becomes a king on squares 29 to 32; a White man does so on 1 to 4. Crowning ends the turn even after a capture. A newly crowned king cannot continue backward during that turn. |
Win and draw checks
The automatic result rules below are checked after a whole turn, not after an intermediate jump. A loss for having no legal move is decided before either draw condition.
| Order | Condition | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The opponent has no legal move, either because no pieces remain or because all remaining pieces are blocked. | The player who just moved wins. |
| 2 | The same piece placement, including which pieces are kings, occurs for the third time with the same color to move. | Automatic draw by repetition. |
| 3 | There have been 80 consecutive non-capturing king moves across both colors, equivalent to 40 moves each without a capture or a man advancing. | Automatic draw for no progress. |
| 4 | None of the earlier conditions applies. | Play continues. |
A capture or any move by an uncrowned man resets the no-progress count. The threshold is not reached at 79 consecutive non-capturing king moves; it is reached at 80. For repetition, the starting position counts as an occurrence, but an otherwise identical position with the other color to move does not match. Selecting a checker or pausing does not add an occurrence.
These automatic draws replace the referee-claim procedures in the competition rules. There is no draw-offer control, tournament clock, or touch-move penalty.
Computer choices and repeatable play
At each step, the casual computer chooses from the currently legal moves without looking ahead or evaluating which position is better. It completes a compulsory multi-jump before play returns. The seed makes those choices repeatable for the same setup and sequence of player moves. Different seeds can still lead to the same reply, especially when only one move is legal. In a two-player game, the seed does not choose either player’s moves.
Worked Examples:
Finishing the double jump
Choose Two players · same device, Red, and Practice · double jump. The position has a Red man on 9 and White men on 14 and 23. Moving 9 × 18 removes the piece on 14 and produces Red: continue jumping from 18. Select the marked destination 27 to jump over 23. The final result is Red wins with Steps played equal to 2, although both jumps formed one Red turn. Stopping on 18 would leave that turn unfinished.
FAQ:
What is saved in this browser?
Moves and computer replies are handled in your browser. Only totals for completed standard games are saved as a local record, combining computer and two-player games. The totals count Red wins, White wins, and draws, including games ended by resignation; double-jump practice does not affect them. The unfinished board and full move history are not saved for restoration after a reload. If browser storage is unavailable, a warning explains that the result is kept only for the current visit. These totals are not skill ratings and have no monetary value.
What does Undo turn take back?
Against the computer, Undo turn restores the position before your last turn and removes the computer’s reply too. In two-player play it takes back the last turn. During a multi-jump, it returns to the start of that turn rather than removing only the latest jump. Up to 100 recent turns are available to undo, but a completed match cannot be undone. The computer’s repeatable choices are restored as well, so making the same move again produces the same reply.
References:
- Rules of Draughts (Checkers), World Checkers/Draughts Federation, 2012.