Rules of Draughts (English Draughts)
Two players, twelve men each, and one law that shapes everything: if you can capture, you must. These are the complete rules of English draughts, the game known as American checkers in the US, exactly as they are enforced by the free game on this site.
The short version: men move one square diagonally forward on the dark squares and capture by jumping over an enemy piece. Black moves first. Captures are compulsory. A man reaching the far row is crowned a king and may then move backwards as well. Capture everything, or block your opponent completely, and you win.
Play a game of draughts free →The board and the starting position
Draughts uses an 8×8 board, but only half of it: all play takes place on the 32 dark squares, and the light squares might as well not exist. Each player sets out 12 men on the dark squares of the three rows nearest them, leaving the two middle rows empty. Black makes the opening move, and the players then take turns; passing is never allowed.
A note on colours, for anyone unpacking a tournament set: official boards are green and buff rather than black and white, and the pieces are red and white, yet the players are still called Black and White in every book on the game. Tradition is stubborn like that.
How men move
An ordinary man has one quiet move available: a single square, diagonally forward, onto an empty dark square. Not sideways, not straight ahead, and never backwards. This forward-only life lasts until the man is crowned.
Capturing
When an enemy piece sits diagonally next to one of your men and the square directly beyond it is empty, you jump: your piece hops over the enemy and lands on that empty square, and the jumped piece is captured. Men jump forward only, in keeping with how they move.
Three laws govern captures, and they decide most games:
- Capturing is compulsory. If any jump is available anywhere on the board, you must play a jump rather than a quiet move.
- You choose between captures. When more than one jump is available, any of them satisfies the law. English draughts has no maximum-capture rule, so you are free to take a single piece even while a triple jump sits waiting elsewhere. That freedom is a tactical weapon in itself.
- Jumps chain together. If the piece that has just jumped can immediately jump again, it must carry on, all within the same turn. Captured pieces come off the board once the whole sequence is finished, and no piece can ever be jumped twice in one turn.
Because captures are forced, deliberately offering a man is the game's central trick: give one, and your opponent may be dragged into position to lose two. Players raised on the huffing rule (more on that below) will recognise why the forced capture matters so much.
Crowning and kings
A man that reaches the row furthest from you is crowned and becomes a king. From then on it moves and captures one square diagonally in any of the four directions, backwards included. Kings in English draughts are not "flying" kings: they step a single square at a time, exactly like men, just with the extra directions. The long-range sliding king belongs to other variants such as International draughts.
One detail catches new players out. If a man arrives on the crowning row by making a jump, the move ends there and then. It is crowned, but it cannot continue capturing as a king within the same turn, even when a further jump is sitting right in front of it. The new king waits for its next turn.
Kings are stronger, not safer: a king can be jumped and captured exactly like a man.
How the game is won
You win by leaving your opponent without a legal move on their turn. Usually that means you have captured all 12 of their pieces, but blocking works too: if their remaining pieces are all trapped with nowhere to go, the game is over and it is not a draw. Running out of moves loses.
How the game is drawn
Endless shuffling between two kings would make a miserable evening, so draughts has two precise draw laws, and this site applies both automatically:
- Threefold repetition. If the same position, with the same player to move, occurs for the third time, the game is drawn.
- The 40-move rule. If 40 consecutive moves by each side pass in which nothing is captured and no man moves (that is, only kings shuffle about), the game is drawn. A single capture, or one man stepping forward, restarts the count.
What happened to huffing?
Ask an older relative about draughts and you may hear of huffing: if a player overlooked a compulsory capture and made some other move instead, the opponent could remove the offending piece from the board as a penalty. The huffed piece was simply lost, and play carried on.
Huffing has been abolished from codified play. The rule of every modern rulebook is forced capture: the capture itself is a legal obligation, not something you can decline and pay a piece for. A handful of traditional games in parts of Africa and South-East Asia still keep huffing alive as local custom, but English draughts dropped it, and serious play everywhere runs on forced capture now.
On this site the question never arises, because the board will not offer you a quiet move while a jump exists. The computer cannot huff you, and you cannot huff it.
Frequently asked questions
Can you move backwards in draughts?
Ordinary men cannot: they move and capture diagonally forward only. Kings can, moving and capturing one square diagonally in any of the four directions.
Do you have to take a piece in draughts?
Yes. Whenever a capture is available on your turn, you must make one, and a piece that starts jumping must keep jumping while further captures are open to it.
Who goes first in draughts?
Black always makes the first move, and the players alternate from there. On this site you can play either colour against the computer.
What happens if two different captures are possible?
You choose. English draughts never forces you to take the longer line: any available capture satisfies the rule, even if another jump would have won more pieces.
Is huffing still a rule in draughts?
No. Huffing, where a piece that failed to make a compulsory capture was itself forfeited, has been abolished from codified play. The modern law makes the capture compulsory instead, and this site enforces it automatically.
How does a game of draughts end in a draw?
Two ways: the same position occurs for the third time with the same player to move, or 40 consecutive moves by each side pass with no piece captured and no man moved.
Still wondering about the name, or how to say it aloud? The word is pronounced "drafts", and our draughts pronunciation guide explains both the sound and the spelling. When you are ready to put the rules to work, play draughts online free against the computer or a friend.
Play draughts online free →