Your first game of Checkers

Set up

Checkers is played on an 8×8 board, but only the dark squares are used. Each side starts with 12 men on the dark squares of the three rows nearest to them. Black moves first, and you play Black unless you choose White.

Your first turn

Move one man diagonally forward to an empty dark square. That is all a move is, until a capture is possible. If an opponent’s man is next to yours, diagonally in front, and the square right behind it is empty, you can jump over it and take it off the board. In our game you must capture whenever you can, and you may choose which capture to make. If the same man can jump again, it keeps going.

When a man reaches the last row, it becomes a king. A king moves and jumps diagonally forward or backward. Becoming a king ends your move, even if another jump is open.

How a game ends

You win when the other side has no pieces left, or no move it can make. A game is a draw if the same position comes up three times, if 80 moves in a row, counting both sides, go by with no capture and no man moved, or if both players agree to a draw.

A short example

Your man is on a dark square next to an opponent’s man, and the square directly behind it is empty. You jump over it and take it off the board. From where you land, another opponent’s man is diagonally in front of you with an empty square behind it. You must jump again, so you take that one too, two men in one turn.