Spanish draughts rules

Board and starting position

The board has 8×8 squares, and only the dark squares are used. Each player starts with 12 men on the 3 rows nearest to them. White moves first.

The board is placed so that the long diagonal runs from the bottom-right corner to the top-left corner.

How ordinary pieces move

A man moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty square. It never moves backward without capturing.

Compulsory capture

If you can capture, you must.

A man captures by jumping over an adjacent enemy piece onto the empty square directly behind it, forward only.

If the capturing piece can capture again, it must continue. Captured pieces are removed only after the whole move, and no piece can be jumped twice.

If there is a choice, you must play the sequence that captures the most pieces (a king counts as one piece).

Kings

A man that reaches the far row becomes a king. If this happens during a capture, the move ends there, even if more pieces could be taken.

A king moves any number of free squares along a diagonal.

A king captures at a distance: it jumps over an enemy piece on its line and may land on any free square behind it. If a landing square allows another capture, the king must choose such a square and continue.

Winning and drawing

• You win when the opponent has no pieces left or cannot make a legal move.
• The game is drawn if the same position occurs three times.
• The game is drawn if 20 moves by each side pass with only kings on the board and no capture.