Smalltalk Ninja Board Games All the boards

Draughts

France, twelfth century, on a board borrowed from chess.

Who moves first?

No account, no email, nothing to install. You get a link to send to whoever you want to play.

How to play

The board

Eight squares by eight, but only the dark ones are used. The light squares stay empty all game.
Twelve men each, filling the three rows of dark squares nearest you.

Moving

A man steps one square diagonally forward, onto an empty square.
Men never move backwards.

Capturing

You capture by jumping an enemy piece diagonally, landing on the empty square directly beyond it.
If a capture is available you have to take it. A quiet move is only legal when nothing can be jumped.
One jump can be followed by another with the same piece. The whole chain is a single turn.

Kings

A man that reaches the far row is crowned and becomes a king.
A king moves and captures one square diagonally, forwards or backwards.
Crowning ends your turn. A man crowned in the middle of a chain of jumps stops there, even with another jump available.

Winning

You win by taking all of your opponent's pieces.
You also win by leaving them with no legal move at all, which one piece against three can be.
Fifty moves by each side with no capture and no man moving is a draw.

Which rules are these?

English draughts, on an eight by eight board with twelve men each.

Draughts is played to different rules in different countries, and the differences are not small ones. The size of the board, the direction men capture in and how far a king travels all change.

This is not international draughts, which differs in three ways that decide games.

The board: Eight by eight with twelve men each. The international game is ten by ten with twenty.
Capturing backwards: Men here capture forwards only. In the international game they capture in both directions.
Flying kings: A king here moves one square at a time. An international king slides any distance along its diagonal.

One more difference is Russian rather than international. A man crowned in the middle of a chain of jumps stops there. Russian shashki lets it carry on as a king; this board does not.

Draughts has no single governing body, so this names the rules played here rather than pointing at a rulebook.