Checkers — the free browser draughts game against a computer that improves

Twelve pieces each on the dark squares of an 8×8 board. Men step one square diagonally forwards; jumping an enemy piece into the empty square beyond it captures that piece. Captures are compulsory — if a jump exists anywhere on the board, a jump is the only move you are allowed — and a multi-jump has to be played all the way to the end. Reach the far row and your piece is crowned a king, which moves and jumps diagonally in both directions.

What turns one game of checkers into a score chase is the opponent. Every game you win, it searches one move deeper: it starts out looking three moves ahead and tops out at seven, which is further than most people track over a board. Your score is your win streak, and a loss or a draw ends the run. Free, no download, and it plays one-handed on a phone.

How to play

• Tap one of your blue pieces, then tap a highlighted square to move it. Green dots are quiet moves, gold dots are captures.
• If a capture is available you must take it — only the pieces that can jump will light up.
• A multi-jump must be finished. After a jump that can continue, the same piece stays selected and you keep going.
• Reach the top row to crown a king (marked with a gold ring). Kings move and jump backwards as well as forwards.
• You win by capturing every enemy piece or leaving the computer with no legal move. Fifty king moves in a row with no capture is a draw.
• Your score is consecutive wins. A win deals a fresh board against a deeper opponent; a loss or a draw ends the run.

Three ideas that win checkers games

Give a piece away on purpose. This is the idea that separates checkers from every game where material is simply good. Because captures are compulsory, a piece you leave en prise is not an offer — it is an instruction. Push a man where it must be taken, and you get to choose which enemy piece does the taking and where that piece ends up. Very often it lands where your own waiting piece jumps it straight back, and sometimes jumps two or three more on the way through. A one-for-two shot is the most common winning pattern in the game, and it always starts with what looks like a blunder. The corollary is defensive: before you take a free piece, look at the square you will be standing on afterwards, because your opponent chose it for you.

Leave your back row alone as long as you can. Your back four squares are exactly the squares an enemy man has to reach to be crowned. Men sitting on them cannot be jumped from behind and they block promotion, so a player who empties the back row early is usually the player who ends up facing the first king — and one king against no kings decides more games than a one-piece material edge does. The engine you are playing scores this explicitly: it adds a bonus for each of its own men still standing on its home row. Hold them, develop the six pieces in front of them, and give the back row up only when you have a concrete reason.

The centre is worth more than the edge, even though the edge feels safe. A piece against the side wall genuinely cannot be jumped — it has no square behind it on that side — which is why beginners drift there. The cost is mobility: a man in the middle of the board has two forward diagonals and a king has four, while a piece on the a- or h-file has half of that, and half its moves means half its chances to be part of a multi-jump. Worse, it is doing nothing to control the four central squares, which is where every long jump chain has to pass through. The evaluation in this game counts each piece's free diagonals and penalises the edge files for exactly that reason. Use the side squares as a temporary refuge, never as a plan.

More games

More games with a thinking opponent: Four in a Row and Reversi, Mancala. For a quieter puzzle, try Sudoku. Or browse all games.