Rules

In all Draughts vari­ants, the fol­low­ing rules ap­ply:

• Play­ers take turn by mov­ing one piece
• Pieces can move to an ad­ja­cent empty po­s­i­tion
• An ad­ja­cent op­pon­ent piece can be cap­tured by jump­ing over it (which im­plies the next po­s­i­tion is avail­able)
• When pos­sible, sev­er­al cap­tures can be per­formed at the same round (with the same piece)

In In­ter­na­tion­al Draughts, these ad­di­tion­al rules also ap­ply:

• Pieces moves only on dark squares
• Simple pieces can only move for­ward, ex­cept for cap­ture
• Pro­moted pieces, called kings, can move along any di­ag­on­al
• After a cap­ture, a king can stop at any avail­able po­s­i­tion on the di­ag­on­al after the cap­tured piece (as­sum­ing skipped po­s­i­tions were free)
• White starts
• Cap­ture is com­puls­ory
• Cap­tured pieces are re­moved after all cap­tures are done
• If a play­er must choose between sev­er­al cap­ture se­quences, he must choose the one that cap­tures the most op­pon­ent pieces
• If a piece reaches the last line dur­ing a cap­ture se­quence, it is not pro­moted, un­less the cap­ture fin­ishes on the last line
• A play­er who can­not play any move loses the game

Credits

His­tory lost the name of those who in­ven­ted the Draughts game base, but a few con­trib­ut­ors de­serve to be men­tioned here:

• Alf­onso X of Castille (1221-1284) for writ­ing the rules of Alquerque for the first time.
• Philip Mouskat (~1243) for men­tion­ning the crown­ing rule.
• Robert Charles Bell (1917-2002) for his re­search in board games and draughts in gen­er­al, and for pro­pos­ing im­prove­ments to the rules of Alquerque.