Simple pieces. Sharp decisions. Build a position, find the forced jump, and make the last move.
Your seat: crimson, at the bottom. You move first. Cream is the computer. Win by leaving the other side with no legal move — either by taking every piece or blocking the pieces that remain.
1. The first steps
Each side begins with twelve men. Only the dark squares are used. A man moves one empty square diagonally forward, toward the far side of the board.
Tap a crimson piece to select it. Hollow rings mark the legal destinations. Tap a ring to move. Before jumping, you can select another movable piece or press Esc to clear your selection.
2. Take the leap
When an enemy is one diagonal square away and the square directly beyond it is empty, jump over the enemy to capture it. Men capture forward only.
Captures are compulsory. If any capture is available, an ordinary step is not allowed. The pieces that can capture glow. You may choose any available capture sequence; you do not have to choose the longest one.
3. Finish the chain
After a jump, the same piece must keep jumping if another legal capture is available. The next landing rings appear automatically. When a route branches, pick the landing you want. You cannot switch pieces or cancel halfway through a chain.
Jumped pieces remain on their squares until the complete turn ends; each can be jumped only once in that sequence. They then fade from the board. This matters when kings travel around a group of pieces.
4. Wear the crown
A man that reaches the far row becomes a king, shown by a stacked rim and an engraved brass crown. Promotion ends that turn, including when the final step was a capture. The newly crowned piece cannot continue jumping backward on the same turn.
A king moves one empty diagonal square forward or backward. It captures an adjacent enemy by jumping into the empty square immediately beyond. Kings do not fly across several squares.
5. When the board is balanced
This prototype automatically declares a draw when the same board position appears for the third time with the same side to move, or after 80 consecutive individual turns (40 moves by each side) with neither a capture nor a man move. A capture or any man move restarts that 80-turn count.
Automatic draws are this app’s convention. Organised English draughts uses claim procedures. If a side has no legal move, the loss takes precedence over a draw count.
Controls at a glance
| Touch or mouse | Select a piece, then a glowing landing ring. |
| Arrow keys | Move the board cursor over dark squares. Tab enters or leaves the board. |
| Enter or Space | Select the focused piece or choose its landing. |
| Esc | Clear a selection before the first jump, or close a dialog. |
| New round | Replace a live round after confirmation. Play again starts immediately after a finished round. |
| How to play | Pause pending computer work while the playbook is open. |
Small habits, stronger play
- Keep your pieces connected. A neighbour often protects the square behind a tempting target.
- Look one jump beyond the obvious capture. Compulsory captures can be used to draw an opponent out of position.
- Hold your back row early when useful. Once kings appear, give your pieces room to move.
- When ahead, trade carefully and keep a route to promotion. A trapped extra piece cannot help you.
About this little opponent
Cream uses deterministic alpha-beta search, looking up to six complete turns ahead with a firm total limit of 20,000 search nodes. A multi-jump is one turn. The last fully completed search depth determines its move. Material, central control, advancement, mobility and king distance inform the evaluation. It is a competent, limited-search opponent, not a perfect player. There is one strength and no difficulty selector.
Offline, standalone & embedded
After the first complete online load, the standalone app and this guide are cached for offline use. An install option is available when supported by your browser. All artwork and fonts are local; no account, network opponent or external runtime is needed.
The current round lives only in memory. Reloading starts a new game. There is no saved progress, undo, score history, clock, multiplayer or settings panel in this PoC. Opening a guide or reset confirmation pauses pending computer actions; closing it resumes the same round.
The custom element can be embedded independently by importing ./game.js and adding <arcade-checkers></arcade-checkers>. Embed hosts decide their own install and offline behaviour. The standalone service worker is registered only by standalone.js.