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Checkers for two: a board that knows the rules

A checkers board for two people. Sit at one screen, pass a phone back and forth, or send a link after each move to someone far away. The page knows the rules: it shows where a piece can go, will not make a move the rules do not allow, makes you take a jump when one is there, crowns a man that reaches the far row, and says who has won. There is no computer opponent, no clock, no account and no ads. Two people, and a game.

Private by design. The game is kept in one place only: the address of this page, after the # sign. Browsers do not send that part of an address to a website, so your moves never reach us. Nothing is saved on this device and nothing is sent. Whoever has the link can see the game and move in it, so send it only to the person you are playing. This page runs no analytics or tracking. How we handle privacy.

The rules, in plain words

The board and the pieces

The game is played on the 32 dark squares of an eight-by-eight board. Nothing ever stands on a light square.
Each player starts with 12 pieces, called men, on the dark squares of the three rows nearest to them.
The player with the darker pieces moves first. On this board that is Red. Then the players take turns.
These are the rules of the game called checkers in the United States and English draughts in Britain. Other kinds of draughts have other rules, and this page does not know them.

Moving and jumping

A step: a man moves one square diagonally forward, onto an empty dark square. A man never moves backward.
A jump: when an enemy piece is on the next square diagonally forward, and the square just beyond it is empty, the man jumps over it and lands there. The piece that was jumped comes off the board.
A jump has to be taken. If a player can jump, that player has to jump; a plain step is not allowed on that turn. The page marks the pieces that have a jump to make.
More than one jump. If the piece that just jumped can jump again from where it landed, it has to go on, in the same turn, until it can jump no more. It may change direction between jumps.
A choice of jumps. When there is more than one way to jump, the player chooses, and does not have to pick the way that takes the most pieces.

Kings

A man that reaches the row farthest from its own side is crowned and becomes a king. On this board a king wears a crown.
The turn ends when a man is crowned, even if it got there by a jump and could have jumped again as a king.
A king steps and jumps diagonally in all four directions, forward and backward, still one square at a time.
A man can jump a king, and a king can jump a man. Either way the jumped piece comes off.

How a game ends

A win: a player wins by jumping all of the other player’s pieces, or by leaving the other player with pieces but no move the rules allow.
A draw: the two players may agree to a draw at any time. Once a game has started the page shows a button, “Call it a draw”, for when both agree.
The page tells you when the same position has come up three times. It does not end the game for that, and it has no rule that counts moves toward a draw.
A player may also give up. The page has no button for that: say it out loud and press “New game”.

Playing with someone far away

Make your move, then press “Copy a link to this game” and send the link by text, email or any messenger.
The other person opens the link, sees the board as you left it, makes a move, and sends their link back.
It is not live: a move does not show up on the other screen by itself. The newest link is the game.
The page cannot know who made a move. Anyone holding a link can move for either side, or take a move back.
Who plays Red? Pick for us can toss a coin.

How the rules were checked

People who write checkers programs test their rules by counting: from the first position, how many different games are possible one move deep, two moves deep, and so on? The counts are published, and a program with a rule wrong gets a different number.
Each time this page is built, a program counts the games this page would allow from one move deep to nine moves deep (3,963,680 games at nine), and the build stops unless every count equals the published one.
The counts are from Perft for Checkers on Aart Bik’s website, fetched on October 13, 2026.
Nine moves deep, kings have hardly appeared (49 king moves among those 3,963,680 games). So on October 13, 2026 the count was also run once, by hand, to twelve moves deep: 388,623,673 games, the published number. In that count, 1,354,789 of the final moves were made by kings, 537,742 of them jumps.
The same program checks a set of small positions we made ourselves: the jump that has to be taken, two jumps in one move, a man that stops when it is crowned, a king jumping backward, and both ways of winning.
The rules explained on this page are our own wording. They were compared with the rules section of Wikipedia’s article English draughts, read on October 13, 2026. They were not checked by a checkers referee, and Scarlet Beast has no tie to either website.

What this page can’t do

It does not play. There is no computer opponent and no AI in it, and it never suggests a move. The marks show where a piece is allowed to go, not whether going there is wise.
It does not keep your game. The game lives in the address of the page. If the page is closed and the link is lost, the game is gone, and we cannot give it back, because we never had it.
It has no clock, no rating and no list of players.
It knows one set of rules. Many families play house rules, such as a jump you may skip. This page does not: a jump that is there has to be taken.
It finishes a jump for you when only one way is left. Once you have chosen where a piece jumps, and the rest of the move can go only one way, the page makes the rest of it, because the rules say it has to be made.
It is not an official rulebook. For a tournament, the organizer’s rules decide.
It was tried by a program in one browser, with a mouse and a keyboard. It has not been tried on a touch screen or with a screen reader.

Pages that go with this

Chess for two: the same kind of board, for chess.
Reversi for two: the same kind of board, for reversi.
Pick for us: a coin, dice, or a name out of a hat, to decide who plays Red.
Visual timer: if you want a time limit for a move.
Sudoku: a puzzle for one.
All the free tools, and how to save them on your phone.

A game, and nothing more. A game can be good company in a long hour, and it cannot do more than that. If things are heavier than a game can hold, Get help now lists people to call. If you are thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 (in the U.S.). If anyone is in danger, call 911.

The tool and the wording on this page were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). There is no AI inside this tool: it knows the rules and nothing else, and it never picks a move. It has been checked by a program, with a mouse and a keyboard in one browser; no person has read it through or played a game on it yet, and the Spanish of the page has not been read by a native speaker. It keeps nothing, so it has no line on My data on this device. Also in Spanish: Damas para dos. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].