Introduction to Checkers (or Draughts) Part 1

Checkers is purely a game of calculation. It is played by two persons on a board of sixty-four squares, colored alternately red and black, or white and black, or any other two opposite colors. This board is placed with a white corner on the upper right hand side.

Each player has twelve men, which on beginning the game, are placed on the first three lines of white squares. The following diagrams, A and B, represent the board and men in their original position, and the mode in which the squares are conventionally numbered for the sake of reference.

The men being placed, the game is begun by each player moving alternately one of his men, along the white diagonal on which they are first posted. The men can only move forward, either to the right or left, one square at a time, unless they have attained one of the four squares on the extreme line of the board, on which they become kinds, and can move either forward or backward, but still only one square at a time.

The men take in the direction they move by leaping over any hostile piece or pieces that may be immediately contiguous, provided thre be a vacant white square behind them. The piece or pieces so taken are then removed from the board, and the man taking them is placed on the square beyond. If several pieces, on forward diagonals, should be exposed by alternately having open squares behind them, they may all be taken at one capture, and the taking piece is then placed on the square beyond the last piece.

To explain the mode of taking by practical illustration, let us begin by placing the checkers in their original position. You will perecive that if Black should move first he can only move one of the men placed on 9, 10, 11 or 12. If he plays the man from 11 to 15 and White answers this move by placing his piece from 22 to 18, Black can take White by leaping his man from 15 to 22, and removing the cpatured piece off the board.

Should Black not take in the above position, but move in another direction -- for instance, from 12 to 16, he is liable to be huffed; that is, White may remove the man with which Black should have taken, from the board, as a penalty for not taking; for in checkers you don't have the option of chess players of refusing to take an opponent when the opportunity arises. In checkers you must always take when you can, whatever the consequence.

The player who is in a position to huff his opponent also has the option of insisting on being taken, instead of standing the huff. When one player huffs the other, in preference to forcing the take, he does not replace the piece his adversary moved; but simply removed hte man huffed from the board, then plays his own move. If he decides to force his opponent to take his piece, then the pawn improperly moved must be replaced.

When either of the men reaches on of the extreme squares on the board, he is, as already indicated, made a king by having another piece put on top, which is called crowning. When a pieced is crowned, his turn is ended and he cannot begin to take any piece which is now available to him until his opponent has made his move. For example, place a white piece on 11, and black on 7 and 6.: white, having the move, takes the man and crowns his piece; but he cannot take the black piece on 6 in the same move, which he could have done if his piece were a king when it made the first capture. But if the piece on 6 is still there after the next move he must take it.

The game is won by the player who first capures or blocks all his adversary's men, so that he has nothing left to move; but when so few pieces are left that each player has only a miniscule force, and being equal in numbers, neither can hope to make any decided impression on his opponent, the game is called a draw.