Checkers
Captures are compulsory. Multi-jumps chain. The proper rules, properly enforced.
Captures are compulsory. Multi-jumps chain. The proper rules, properly enforced.
Twelve pieces each, dark squares only, forward moves only — until you reach the far side, get crowned, and can go anywhere. Simple enough to teach in a minute, and deep enough that it took a team of computer scientists eighteen years to prove the game is a draw with perfect play.
One rule matters more than the rest, and casual implementations quietly skip it: if you can capture, you must capture. That single obligation is what turns checkers from a shuffling game into a knife fight — because you can force your opponent into a capture that costs them three pieces.
Because a capture is available somewhere on the board, and captures are compulsory in checkers. This isn't the game being awkward — it's the rule, and it's the rule that makes the game interesting. Look for the jump; you have to take it.
Yes. In 2007, after eighteen years of computation, the Chinook project proved that checkers played perfectly by both sides is a draw. It's one of the largest games ever solved. Which means the machine here can, in principle, never be beaten by perfect play — happily, at the levels you'll play it, it isn't perfect.
Control the centre and keep your back row intact for as long as you can — those four pieces are the wall that stops your opponent getting crowned. And count the exchange before you take it: in checkers a 'free' capture is very often the bait on a multi-jump that costs you two pieces to their one.
The full rules of checkers — including the one everybody forgets