Two players, a board of 10 by 10 squares and 20 pieces each. Only the dark squares are used. You win by capturing all of your opponent’s pieces — or by blocking them so that they have no legal move left.
You can play on your own against the computer (at three strengths) or with someone from the arcade. A game takes ten to twenty minutes.
The board has 100 squares, but only the 50 dark ones are used. Each player sets up 20 pieces on the four rows closest to them; two rows stay empty in between.
Your pieces are ivory river pebbles, your opponent’s are anthracite. Your own camp is always at the bottom — even when you take the second seat in a duel: the board is then turned for you so that you move in the familiar direction.
If an opponent piece sits diagonally next to yours and the square behind it is free, you jump over it and take it off the board.
Capturing is compulsory. If any capture is available, you may not do anything else. So that nobody has to guess, only the pieces that really can capture light up at that moment — they briefly get a bright rim. Tap a different one and the game tells you why it will not work.
⚠️ There is no majority rule. You must capture, but you are free to choose which capture you take — even if another one would have brought more pieces. Some tournament rules differ; here it would be too harsh for casual players.
This is the most common argument at the kitchen table, so let us be explicit:
A man captures in all four directions — backwards included. Only moving is restricted to forwards.
That is the international way of playing and it makes the game much sharper: a piece that seems safely tucked behind your lines can strike from behind at any moment.
If you can jump again from the square you landed on, you must keep jumping — all of it together is one single move.
On a phone you tap your way through it jump by jump: after each jump the board shows again where it continues. Only when nothing lights up any more is the move sent.
Two details that are often missed:
If your man reaches the far row and stops there, it becomes a king. You can see it straight away: it sits on a second pebble and wears a copper ring as a crown 👑 — never just a different colour, which nobody could tell apart on a phone.
⚠️ And here is the catch: if your man only jumps across the far row in a chain, or lands there and has to keep jumping, it does not become a king — it stays a man and carries on capturing as one. Only stopping there earns the crown.
A king is the strongest piece in the game:
Where you land often decides the game: one square further can make the next jump possible — or impossible.
There are two ways to win:
So that a game does not run forever, it ends in a draw when:
⚠️ A win on the board always comes first: whoever has no move left at that moment has lost — even if the draw counter was full.
Two steps, always the same ones:
Tapping another one of your pieces switches the selection. Tapping empty space clears it. On a computer the Esc key does the same.
The last move played stays on the board as a copper trail — so even after a break you can see straight away what just happened.
Above the board there is a Japanese garden in winter light: a pond with an icy rim, the red bridge, bare ornamental cherries, black pines and a stone lantern.
The picture is not wallpaper, it tells you the state of play: the sky follows the real time of day (the server’s, not your device’s), the captured pieces lie on the shore as two little heaps of pebbles — light on the left, dark on the right — and the lantern is lit as soon as there is a king anywhere on the board.
| Level | What it does |
|---|---|
| Easy | looks three moves ahead and plays every fifth move more or less anywhere |
| Medium | looks six moves ahead and never misses a capture |
| Hard | calculates for about half a second, as deep as it gets in that time |
Because capturing is compulsory there are often very few legal moves — which lets the computer look much further ahead than in other games. Do not underestimate “Medium”.
Games against the computer are practice: they are counted and shown in your record, but they earn neither points nor milestones.
What counts are games against other players. The Duel Corner is built for playing together — the computer is there for when nobody else is around.
Your points 🏆 come from duel games: 10 for a win, 4 for a draw, 1 for taking part. They count towards the arcade leaderboards (week, month, year).
Your level ⭐ is the number of milestones you have reached, plus one. There are five, and they are the same as in the other games of the Duel Corner: your first game against another player, your first win against another player, playing against 3 different people, 5 wins and 25 wins against other players.
Practice against the computer does not count towards points or milestones. It is not lost, though: your record keeps it separately — including your longest jump chain.
Results are saved: wins, losses, draws, your streaks and your settings. This happens at the end of every game.
A solo game in progress is not saved. If you close the page mid-game, you start fresh next time.
⚠️ A duel is different: there the position lives on the server. You can close the page and carry on from another device — as long as your move clock is still running.
Draughts runs entirely on your device: the computer calculates in your browser, nothing goes over the network for it. Once you have opened the game online, you can start it again without a connection — on a train, on a plane, in a basement.
Your results are then stored on the device and sent automatically as soon as you are back online. The lobby naturally needs a connection.
Above the board there are two buttons: on your own and two players. Tap two players and you open a table straight away — the page does not change.
While the table is open nothing is set up: the board stays empty, and above it you can read how many seats are taken. The game only starts once both of you are there. A seat nobody is sitting on says “🪑 free” — the computer never sits down by itself.
Everything else — the table code, invitations, being called back to the table, the move clock, the chat and the scoring — works exactly as in every other game of the Duel Corner. It is described in detail in the 🎯 Duel Corner guide.
Draughts comes in many sizes. We play the international form on 10 by 10 squares with 20 pieces — the tournament standard worldwide, richer to play and a better stage for a computer opponent.
The smaller form on 8 by 8 squares with 12 pieces is the one many people know from childhood. It is bigger on a phone and quicker to finish — and in some regions men there may capture forwards only. Here they capture in every direction; that is stated explicitly above.