Draughts/ Checkers

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Draughts (drafts or /dɹɑfʦ/) (British English) or checkers (American English) is a group of abstract strategy board games between two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over the enemy's pieces.

The most popular forms are international draughts, played on a 10×10 board, followed by English draughts, also called American checkers that is played on an 8×8 board, but there are many other variants. The game of draughts is older than the game of chess.

General rules

Draughts 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. The player with the dark pieces makes the first move unless stated otherwise. Pieces move diagonally and pieces of the opponent are captured by jumping over them. The playable surface consists only of the dark squares. A piece may only move into an unoccupied square. Capturing is mandatory in some rules. A piece that is captured is removed from the board. In all variants, the player who has no pieces left or cannot move anymore has lost the game unless otherwise stated.

Uncrowned pieces ("men") move one step diagonally forwards and capture other pieces by making two steps in the same direction, jumping over the opponent's piece on the intermediate square. Multiple opposing pieces may be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece. In English draughts men can only capture forwards, but in international draughts they may also capture (diagonally) backwards.

When men reach the crownhead or kings row (the farthest row forward), they become kings, marked by placing an additional piece on top of the first, and acquire additional powers including the ability to move backwards (and capture backwards, in variants in which they cannot already do so).

In international draughts, kings can move as far as they want in diagonals like a bishop in chess. However, they cannot capture like a bishop, but jump over the captured piece, moving over as many empty fields as the player wants but jumping over only a single, opposing piece in each jump. (As with men, a king may make successive jumps in a single turn provided that each is a capture.) This rule, known as flying kings, is not used in English draughts, in which a king's only advantage over a man is the ability to move and capture backwards as well as forwards. Notice that captured pieces are removed from the board only after capturing is finished. Thus sometimes the captured but not yet removed piece obliges a king to stop after capturing at a given field where he in turn will be captured by the adversary.

Read more at Wikipedia.org