Turkish draughts (dama) rules

Board and starting position

The game is played on all 64 squares of an 8×8 board. Each player starts with 16 men on the second and third rows nearest to them. White moves first.

How ordinary pieces move

A man moves one square straight forward or sideways onto an empty square. It never moves backward or diagonally.

Compulsory capture

If you can capture, you must.

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

If the capturing piece can capture again, it must continue, but it may not turn back along the line it came from. Captured pieces are removed at once.

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

Kings

A man becomes a king only if its move ends on the far row. If it merely passes over that row during a capture and keeps capturing, it stays a man.

A king moves any number of free squares along a row or a column.

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.