Checkers

Checkers is a game with a red and black board with 64 square spaces. Two people can play checkers and one person is red, the other is black. Each player gets 12 checkers. To set up the board, the red checkers go on the first 3 rows on the black squares only. Do the opposite on the black side, placing the black checkers on the first 3 rows of red squares. Red gets to go first and has to move 1 check forward onto an adjacent free black square.

checkers board game for kids

The checkers can only move in a forward and diagonal direction. Take turns moving one checker, one square forward diagonally, at a time. If your opponent's checker is in a square diagonal and adjacent to your own checker, and there is a free square on the other side, you can `jump` their checker. This means you move your checker over your opponent’s and take their jumped checker from the board.

If you jump a checker and land in a position to jump another of their checkers, then you can jump that checker as well during the same turn and take both of those checkers off the board. If one of your checkers reaches the farthest row from your side (your opponent's back row), you get to `king` that checker. One of your jumped checkers gets stacked on top of the king checker and now you can move the `king` both forward and backward, in a diagonal way. The winner is the first player to remove all of the opponent's checkers from the board by jumping them. If one player blocks his opponent so that he cannot move, then the game is over and that player is the winner.