🇮🇹 Italian Draughts 8×8

Capturing is compulsory

• Capturing is mandatory, and you must take the sequence that captures the most pieces.

If a capture exists on your turn, every quiet move disappears: they are not bad moves, they simply do not exist. The obligation applies to the whole position, not to a single piece.

There is no penalty for getting it wrong: a capture that breaks the rules is rejected and the position stays as it was.

How a capture works

• Captures are made diagonally, jumping over an adjacent enemy piece.
• Men may capture forward only.
• Kings move one square at a time (no flying kings).

A king also jumps a single square: the enemy piece must be immediately next to it on the diagonal.

The square behind the captured piece must be empty. If it is occupied, by any piece at all, or off the board, that capture does not exist.

Men and kings

• Men cannot capture kings.

To a man, an enemy king is a wall: it can neither be captured nor jumped over. A king placed in front of a group of pieces puts them out of reach of every man.

The multi-capture

If after a jump the piece faces another capturable piece, it must carry on. Stopping halfway is not a choice: an incomplete sequence is not a legal move.

You may change direction at every jump. A man, however, only alternates between its two forward diagonals: it never gains a backward capture during the sequence.

The same enemy piece cannot be jumped twice in one sequence. The same empty square, on the other hand, may be crossed as often as needed.

Capture precedence

When more than one capture is available, the choice is not yours. The game compares them by these criteria, in this order: it only moves to the next criterion when the previous one leaves several captures tied.

The comparison spans every capture by every one of your pieces. A piece can therefore be stuck because another piece has a better capture.

1. Level 1You must play the capture that takes the greatest number of pieces.Pieces are counted, not their value: two men beat one king.

2. Level 2With the piece count equal, you must capture with a king, not with a man.The criterion is about the capturing piece, not the captured one. If a king and a man take the same number of pieces, the king must move, even when the man would take more valuable pieces.

3. Level 3Still equal, you must play the capture that takes the greatest number of kings.Here what matters is the value of what you remove. Since only kings can capture kings, this criterion only ever separates captures made by a king.

4. Level 4Still equal, you must choose the sequence that captures a king earliest.It looks at the order of the jumps: between two routes taking the same pieces, the one that meets the king on the earlier jump wins.

5. Level 5If the captures remain equivalent, the choice is free.Beyond this point no rule binds the player: two captures identical on every criterion may be played interchangeably.

When the pieces come off

Captured pieces stay on the board until the move ends and are taken off together once the sequence is complete. That is why you still see them in place during a multi-capture.

Promotion ends the capture

• A man reaching the last row is promoted and the move ends, even mid-capture.

If a man reaches the last row during a sequence, the move ends there: the man becomes a king and the turn passes, even if further jumps would be available from that square. The new king moves from the following turn.

Promotion grants no exemption from precedence: the interrupted sequence is compared on the pieces it actually took. If another capture takes more, the promoting one is illegal.

For precedence, a man that promotes still counts as a man: it does not gain a king's priority.

No huffing

The "huffing" rule does not apply: a player who misses a compulsory capture does not lose the piece, they simply cannot play that move.