Frisian draughts

The board

Most codes use a board of squares with the pieces confined to squares of one colour, so the whole game happens on the diagonals. The board is eight squares a side for the English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian and pool codes, ten for international and Frisian, and twelve for Canadian.

Each player fills the rows nearest them, leaving two empty rows in the middle. The Turkish family is the exception to all of this: it uses every one of the sixty-four squares and moves orthogonally, which makes it look and feel like a different game entirely.

• 8x8 with dark squares: English, Russian, pool, Brazilian, Italian, Spanish.
• 10x10: international and Frisian, twenty pieces a side.
• 12x12: Canadian, thirty pieces a side.
• All 64 squares: Turkish, Armenian and Greek, sixteen pieces a side on the second and third ranks.

How ordinary pieces move

An uncrowned piece is called a man. It steps one square diagonally forward to an empty square. It never moves backwards, and in most codes it never steps sideways.

Capturing is different from moving. A man captures by jumping over an adjacent enemy piece and landing on the empty square directly beyond it. Whether it may jump backwards as well as forwards is the first thing that separates the codes: international, Russian and Brazilian men capture in all four directions, while English, Italian and Spanish men capture only forwards.

If the landing square is occupied, the jump is not available. A man cannot jump over two pieces standing side by side, and it cannot jump over its own piece at all.

Crowning, and what a king can do

A man that finishes its move on the far row is crowned and becomes a king. It is usually shown by stacking a second piece on it.

There are two kinds of king. A short king moves and captures exactly one square, like a man that can also go backwards. A flying king slides any distance along a clear diagonal, and captures at a distance: it takes the first enemy piece on the diagonal and lands on any empty square beyond it, choosing which one, which often matters because that choice decides whether it can carry on capturing.

English and Italian kings are short. International, Russian, Spanish, Brazilian, Canadian, Frisian and pool kings fly. Turkish kings fly too, but along ranks and files rather than diagonals.

Capture is compulsory

In every code on this site except the historic huffing variants, if a capture is available you must make it. You may not decline one in order to make a quieter move you prefer, and once you start a sequence you must play it to the end.

Where the codes disagree is what happens when more than one capture is available. English, Russian, Greek and pool let you take any of them, so long as you finish the one you start. International, Brazilian, Canadian, Spanish, Turkish and Frisian impose a majority rule: you must play the sequence that captures the most pieces. Italian goes further and applies a strict order of priority.

This is why the board on this site highlights every legal capture path when a capture is on. Working out which sequence the majority rule forces is genuinely hard, and getting it wrong is the most common way to lose a game you had won.

• Any capture, completed: English, Russian, pool, Greek.
• Most pieces: international, Brazilian, Canadian, Turkish.
• Most pieces, then most kings: Spanish.
• Most pieces, then a king must capture, then most kings, then the king met first: Italian.
• Most value, counting a king as one and a half men: Frisian.

Multiple jumps

A capture that lands on a square from which another capture is available continues, with the same piece, as part of the same move. A sequence of six or seven is not unusual on the larger boards, and the whole chain counts as a single turn.

Two details decide how these sequences actually play out. The first is when captured pieces come off the board. Most codes remove them only after the whole sequence is finished, which means they stay in place as obstacles and cannot be jumped a second time. The Turkish family removes each piece the moment it is jumped, which opens paths that would otherwise be blocked.

The second is what happens if a man reaches the crowning row in the middle of a sequence. In Russian and Turkish it is crowned at once and carries on as a king, often continuing in a direction a man could never have taken. In pool checkers, which is otherwise Russian, it does not: it stays a man for the rest of the move. In international it is not crowned at all unless the sequence ends there.

Winning and drawing

You win by taking all of your opponent's pieces, or by leaving them with no legal move. Being blocked is a loss, not a stalemate, which is why shutting a position down is a real strategy rather than a way to save half a point.

Draws are common in strong play, and each code has its own machinery for ending a game that is going nowhere. Threefold repetition of the same position with the same player to move is a draw everywhere. Beyond that, most codes count moves in which nothing irreversible happens: international draws after twenty-five moves each in which only kings have moved and nothing has been captured, Russian after fifteen, English and Italian after forty moves without a capture or a man being moved.

There are also endgame tables for positions that are theoretically won but tedious to prove. In international, three pieces including a king against a lone king must be finished within sixteen moves, and two pieces against a lone king within five. Russian gives a lone king five moves if it holds the long diagonal and fifteen if it does not.

Reading the notation

Most codes number the playable squares and write moves as numbers: 31-27 is a quiet move, and 27x18 is a capture. The numbering runs across the playable squares from the top left of the board as White sees it, so an eight-by-eight board runs 1 to 32, a ten-by-ten 1 to 50, and Canadian 1 to 72.

A multiple jump is written with every square the piece lands on, so 27x18x9 is a double. Russian and the Turkish family use algebraic square names instead, the way chess does, because those codes use the whole board or grew up alongside a different notation tradition.

Finished games can be exported as PDN, the standard portable format, which any serious draughts program will read.