Checkers

Checkers

The rules that rule the pieces in checkers

This exciting board game requires a unique mix of brains and an imaginative brawn. You are the mastermind behind a war in which everything good and decent is at stake. Here are the rules that govern the battlefield. In the best of matches, the rules metamorphose from simple variations into the physics of a new world…

Learning to play checkers is child’s play, but devising strategies to be a good player takes skill and lots of practice. The winner, of course, is the first one to capture all of an opponent’s men or to block them so that they can’t move. To test your mettle, follow these instructions:

Opponent face each other across the board, which has eight rows of eight squares each, alternately white and black. One player takes the white pieces, or men, and puts them on the black squares in the three horizontal rows nearest him. The opponent places the black checkers on the black squares in the three rows facing him.

Rand and File: In both checkers and chess, the rows across are known as ranks; the columns as files. In checkers, only the black squares are used.

The opponents take turns – white goes first, then black – moving a man forward diagonally toward the opponent’s side. Only the black squares are used. With each turn, a player moves one man to an adjacent empty square. When one player’s man comes up against an enemy checker and there is an empty space behind it, the player jumps over the enemy, landing on the unoccupied square. The captured checker is removed from the board.

One man can jump two or more enemy pieces consecutively, by moving diagonally left or right after the first jump, as long as there are empty spaces to land on between each jump. A checker that makes it to any square in the opponent’ first row becomes a king. The checker gets crowned by a man of the same color that is not in play. The king can move, and jump, forward and backward.