Jump, chain captures and crown your kings. Checkers is a free 2 player board game you can play on one phone or vs the computer. Jump rival pieces, chain multi-jumps and crown kings to win.
How to play
Checkers is played on the dark squares of an eight-by-eight board. Each player starts with twelve pieces on the three rows nearest them. Red starts at the bottom and moves first, and Blue starts at the top. Ordinary pieces, called men, move one square diagonally forward onto an empty square.
- Tap one of your glowing pieces to select it. Its possible destinations light up, and jump routes are drawn square by square with an X on every piece they would capture.
- Tap a destination and the piece hops there. If only one of your pieces can move, it is selected for you.
- On a computer you can click, or move a cursor with the arrow keys and press Space to pick up and put down.
Captures
If a rival piece sits diagonally next to yours with an empty square behind it, you can jump over it and remove it from the board. Captures are compulsory: when any jump is available you must take one, and the status line reminds you. If you land where another jump is possible, the same piece must keep jumping until no jump is left. When several capture routes exist you may choose any of them, not just the longest.
Kings
A man that reaches the far row is crowned and gains a gold crown. Kings move and capture diagonally both forwards and backwards. A man that is crowned in the middle of a jump stops there, and its turn ends.
Winning and drawing
You win when your rival has no pieces left or cannot make a legal move on their turn. If both players make 40 moves each without a capture, the game is a draw, and the footer counts down the last ten moves so you can see it coming.
Playing the computer
Switch the second seat to CPU on the setup screen and pick a level. Easy looks two moves ahead and sometimes slips up, Normal looks four moves ahead and Hard looks up to six. The computer always answers within a fraction of a second, even on a phone.
Tips
- Keep your back row for as long as you can. It stops your rival from crowning.
- Trade when you are ahead. Swapping pieces one for one makes a lead count for more.
- Watch for forced jumps. Because captures are compulsory, you can offer a piece to pull a rival into a position where you get a double jump in return.
Checkers is simple to start and full of clever traps, which makes it a classic for a quick game with a friend on the same phone.