Checkers
Jump, crown your kings, and trap the computer.
About Checkers
Checkers — draughts, outside North America — is one of the oldest board games still played seriously today. Its ancestor alquerque was played in the ancient Near East, and the game took its modern shape on a chessboard in 12th-century France (see checkers on Wikipedia). It also holds a unique place in computing history: in 2007, after eighteen years of computation, a team at the University of Alberta proved that checkers is a draw with perfect play from both sides — making it the most complex game ever solved. That fact says something reassuring about the game: it looks simple, and it is deep enough that it took two decades of computers to exhaust it.
This is PlayZone's own build, written in-house and running entirely in your browser with no download and no account. It plays standard American checkers on an 8×8 board with twelve pieces a side: men move diagonally forward, captures are compulsory, multi-jumps chain automatically, and a man reaching the far row is crowned a king that moves in all four diagonal directions. Play against a computer opponent at three levels — it searches ahead using the same minimax technique as our Four in a Row — or switch to two-player mode and hand the device back and forth. Your win-loss record against the computer is saved on your device.
How to Play Checkers
Tap one of your pieces and every square it can legally reach lights up: cyan dots for quiet moves, red for captures. Tap a highlighted square to play the move. Men move one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square; you capture by jumping an adjacent enemy piece into the empty square directly beyond it. If a jump is available anywhere on the board you must take one — that is the rule, not a suggestion, and the game will not offer you a quiet move while a capture exists. Multi-jumps are handled for you: if a capture leads to another, the whole chain plays as a single move. Reach the opposite back row and your piece is crowned, gaining the ability to move and jump backwards as well. You win by capturing every enemy piece — or by leaving your opponent with no legal move at all.
Strategy: Why Good Players Give Pieces Away
- Compulsory capture is a weapon. Because your opponent must jump, you can steer them. Offering one piece to force a jump that lands them where you can take two is the fundamental checkers tactic — every strong player thinks in these two-for-one trades.
- Hold your back row as long as you can. The four squares on your own back rank are the only squares an enemy man can never occupy without being crowned. Keeping them filled denies your opponent easy kings; emptying them early is the most common beginner mistake.
- Take the centre, not the edges. A piece on the side wall has half the moves of one in the middle. Edge squares feel safe because they cannot be jumped from that side, but safety without mobility loses slowly.
- Advance as a wall, not as a scout. Pieces defend each other by standing on adjacent diagonals so any jump can be recaptured. A lone piece pushed deep is usually a gift.
- Trade when you are ahead. One piece up, the fastest path to victory is to swap pieces off. Twelve against eleven is a small edge; three against two is decisive. When behind, do the opposite and keep the board crowded.
- Kings are worth roughly two men. Racing a man toward crowning is often better than grabbing a piece — and stopping the opponent's man from crowning is worth a real sacrifice.
Three Levels of Opponent
Easy looks one move ahead with a dose of randomness — it will take a free piece but miss most traps, which makes it a good sparring partner while you learn the compulsory-capture rule. Medium searches three moves deep and punishes obvious blunders. Hard searches five moves deep with alpha-beta pruning: it sees most two-for-one shots coming and will happily bait you into one. If you enjoy this, our Four in a Row uses the same search technique on a different board, and Dots and Boxes offers the same sacrifice-to-win logic in miniature.
Further Reading
- The Best Free Browser Games to Play in 2026 Where classic board games fit among this year's picks.
- Do Browser Games Really Benefit Your Brain? The honest evidence on planning-heavy games like this one.
- Work Break Games: 15 Best Quick Games for 5-Minute Breaks A game on Easy fits neatly into a coffee break.
FAQ
Do I have to take a jump?
Yes — captures are compulsory in standard checkers, and this game enforces it. If any jump is available, only jumps are offered as legal moves. It is what makes forcing sequences and sacrifices possible.
How do multi-jumps work?
If a jump lands your piece where another jump is available, the chain continues — and the whole sequence plays as one move when you tap the destination. One exception follows the standard rule: if a jump crowns your piece, the turn ends there rather than continuing as a king.
What can a king do?
A king moves and jumps diagonally in all four directions instead of just forward. It is marked with a crown symbol. Getting the first king is often the turning point of a game, which is why blocking your opponent's back row matters so much.
How do I win?
Capture all twelve of your opponent's pieces, or leave them with no legal move — a player who cannot move loses, even with pieces still on the board. Blocking a trapped opponent is a perfectly legitimate way to win.
What changes between the difficulty levels?
How far ahead the computer searches: one move on Easy (plus some deliberate sloppiness), three on Medium, five on Hard. Deeper search means it spots multi-move traps — on Hard, expect it to offer you a piece in order to take two back.
Can two people play on one device?
Yes — switch to two-player mode and pass the device back and forth. The turn indicator shows whose move it is, and the difficulty selector hides since the computer is not playing.
Does the game save my record?
Yes — your wins and losses against the computer are stored locally in your browser and persist between visits on the same device. Two-player games are not counted in that record. Clearing browser data resets it.