Draughts vs Checkers: Same Game, Two Names
Let’s settle it in one line: draughts and checkers are the same game. Twelve pieces each on the dark squares of an 8×8 board, jumps you cannot refuse, crowns for the pieces that survive the journey. A player from Manchester and a player from Chicago could sit down together and never once disagree about a move. The only argument would be over what to call the thing they were playing.
Is draughts the same as checkers?
Yes. Draughts is the British name and checkers is the North American name for one game with identical rules. Men move diagonally forward, capturing is compulsory, and a piece reaching the far row becomes a king. Nothing about the play changes when the word does.
That answer covers probably ninety-five percent of the times the question gets asked. The remaining five percent is where it gets interesting, because each name carries its own history, and there are situations where “draughts” on a box means a different game altogether. We’ll get to those.
Two names, two points of view
The odd thing about this pair of names is that neither describes the other’s choice badly. They just look at different parts of the game.
“Checkers” looks at the board. A chequered surface of alternating light and dark squares gives the game its American name, the same way it gave us “chequered flag”. Straightforward and done.
“Draughts” looks at the moves. The word is an old relative of “draw”, and the usual account is that moving a piece was drawing it, so a game built entirely from such moves ended up named after them. It is pronounced “drafts”, by the way, silent gh and all. If the spelling has ever made you hesitate to say it aloud, our guide to pronouncing draughts will sort you out in about a minute.
So one country named the board and the other named the action. Neither is wrong, and neither came first in any way that settles the argument, because the game itself is far older than the disagreement. BoardGameGeek’s survey of the family traces European draughts back to the twelfth century, with France or Spain the likely birthplace. English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic inherited the game; they just labelled the tin differently.
Where each name lives
The dividing line is roughly the one you’d guess. Britain and Ireland say draughts. So, broadly, does the Commonwealth. The United States and Canada say checkers. The formal literature splits the same way: the game’s governing bodies include the English Draughts Association on one side of the water and the American Checker Federation on the other, and both administer the same rules under the World Checkers Draughts Federation, whose name diplomatically refuses to pick a side.
You’ll also see “English draughts” and “American checkers” used as precise labels, especially anywhere multiple variants share a page. Both phrases mean this exact game. Some older American sources add “straight checkers” to the pile. Five names now, one game still.
Neither name should suggest a game confined to two countries, mind. BoardGameGeek’s records list tournaments in this exact 8×8 form across Australia, Barbados, Canada, China, Denmark, Ireland, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa and beyond, alongside the British and American scenes. What travels with the game in each place is, of course, a local decision about what to call it.
Serious play adds one wrinkle worth knowing about: at championship level the openings are often drawn from a deck of prescribed three-move sequences rather than chosen freely, so no two matches start from the same pet lines. Casual play, the kind you can start in your browser right now, uses no such restriction. You move whatever you like and live with the consequences.
The rules that both names share
Since the whole point of this article is that the game underneath is identical, here is that game in brief. Each side starts with 12 men on the dark squares of its first three rows. Black moves first. Men step one square diagonally forward and capture by jumping; every available capture is compulsory, though when several jumps are on offer you pick freely between them. A man reaching the far row is crowned a king, which moves and captures one square diagonally in all four directions. No flying kings here: an English draughts king walks, it doesn’t glide.
The full rules of draughts run through all of it properly, draw laws included. Reading them as an American checkers player is a strangely reassuring experience. There is nothing to relearn.
Around the world, everyone says “ladies”
Step outside English and the two-name squabble vanishes into something more charming: most of the world named the game after its promoted piece. Spain and Portugal play damas. Italy and Turkey each call their game dama. France gave us jeu de dames, Germany Dame, Sweden damspel. Russia is the outlier with shashki. The “dama” is the crowned piece we call a king, so a rough translation of half the world’s names for this family is simply “the ladies’ game”, or “queens”.
Those national names usually attach to national rule sets, which brings us to the small print.
When the names really do mean different games
Here is the trap. “Draughts” and “checkers” name our 8×8 game when the context is Britain or North America, but both words also serve as the family surname for dozens of related games, and some of those relatives play very differently.
The big one is international draughts, played on a 10×10 board with 20 men a side, backward-capturing men, and long-range flying kings. It is a genuinely different game, arguably the most widely played member of the family, and when a Dutch or French player says “draughts” this is usually what they mean. We’ve written a full comparison of English draughts and international draughts if you want to see how deep the differences go.
Beyond that sit Russian shashki, Spanish and Italian damas with their own capture laws, and larger boards still. So if you ever buy a set abroad or join a game online, it is worth one quick question: which draughts? On this site the answer is always English draughts, the same game your American cousin calls checkers.
The short version
Call it draughts, call it checkers; the board neither knows nor cares. Same setup, same forced jumps, same kings. The names split along the Atlantic somewhere in the game’s long history, and the only genuine confusion arises when either word is stretched to cover the wider family of variants.
And if all this talk has put you in the mood, the board is waiting. Play checkers or draughts online free, right here, and call it whatever you grew up calling it.
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