How to play Checkers well

One rule builds the whole game of checkers: if you can capture, you must. Learn to use it as bait and the game changes.

Forced capture is a weapon

If you can capture you must capture, so when you give up a piece on purpose, the opponent has no choice but to take it. That forces them to move, and behind the square they land on you can set up two or three captures in a row. That is the heart of checkers: give one, take two, and you win.

Guard your back row for as long as you can

Pieces left on your own back row stop the opponent from making a king, and a king moves both ways and is far stronger than a man, so do not empty that row carelessly. A piece pushed forward in a hurry is easy to trap or capture, and once your back row is open the opponent's king runs the board.

Trade when you are ahead

When you have more pieces, welcome even trades, because the fewer pieces there are, the bigger a one piece lead becomes, and the side ahead wins the endgame. When you are behind, do the opposite: avoid trades and keep the board complicated, which is where comebacks come from.

The center beats the edge

A piece on the edge has only one diagonal, so it has few places to go and few things to capture. A piece in the center uses both, so at equal value the square nearer the center is better. An edge piece cannot be captured, though, so it can also work as a shield. Know when to hold and when to step out.

Greed loses

If you only chase the capture in front of you, you walk into a bigger one that the opponent has set up behind it. We measured it in our own simulation. We matched a side that only takes immediate gain against a side that reads several moves ahead, and the side that only took immediate gain lost by a wide margin. Before you capture, look once more at what the opponent can do from the square you land on.

How to choose the day's rule

Three of the 4 candidate rules are drawn for the day, and you ban one and pick one. The rules differ quite a lot from each other.

Backward capture Today men can capture backward too (they still only move forward).
Single capture Today there are no multi-jumps. You capture one piece at a time.
Optional capture Today you do not have to capture, even when you can.
Flying kings Today kings slide diagonally as far as they like, until something blocks them.

Think about the ban first. Banning the one that is worst for you is worth more than picking. For example, backward capture is dangerous for a player with weak defense, so if you do not like that style, ban it first.

The same day is the same board

There is no randomness. The candidates are set by the date and the opponent always plays the same moves on the same board. So if you replay a lost game you can see exactly where it turned. A loss was the wrong order of moves, not bad luck, so learning it makes you better. The board never locks up under any rule. A rule that kills the game is not a rule but an accident, so we measured each rule in a balance simulation and dropped the bad ones.

About the name of this game

Checkers is an old shared game that belongs to no company, and anyone can build the form. Only the extra rule of the day is ours, and it was not carried over from someone else's game. We wrote it.