Twelve pieces a side face off along the diagonals. Capture, crown your kings and trap your opponent: play Russian draughts with flying kings, Italian draughts with strict capture priorities, or giveaway, where the first to get rid of all their pieces wins.
Goal: Capture all of your opponent's pieces or leave them without a legal move. In giveaway it is the other way round: the first player left with no pieces or no moves wins.
Two players use only the 32 dark squares of an 8×8 board. Each player has 12 men, placed on the dark squares of the three rows nearest to them. White moves first, then the players take turns, one move each.
In Russian and giveaway draughts the board is placed with a dark corner square at each player's bottom left; in Italian draughts it is at the bottom right.
A man moves one square diagonally forwards onto a free square.
A man that reaches the far row is crowned and becomes a king. In Russian and giveaway draughts the king is a “flying” king: it moves any number of free squares along a diagonal, forwards or backwards, without jumping over pieces. In Italian draughts the king moves just one square, but in all four directions.
You capture by jumping over an adjacent enemy piece on a diagonal and landing on the free square right behind it; the jumped piece is removed. If another capture is possible from the landing square, you keep jumping in the same move (a multiple capture).
Capturing is compulsory: if you can capture, you must, and a capture must be completed while pieces can still be taken. Captured pieces are removed only at the end of the move, so during a multiple capture you may not jump the same piece twice or pass through it (in Russian draughts this is the “Turkish strike” rule).
Men capture both forwards and backwards. A king captures from a distance: if an enemy piece stands on its diagonal, with only free squares in between and at least one free square behind it, the king jumps over it and lands on any free square beyond. However, if it can continue capturing from one of those squares, it must land there and go on.
If a man reaches the far row during a capture and can keep capturing, it is crowned at once and continues the capture as a king. When several captures are possible you may choose any of them, even one that takes fewer pieces.
Men capture only forwards and may not capture kings; kings capture in every direction by jumping an adjacent piece. A man that reaches the far row with a capture stops there and becomes a king.
When several captures are possible, these priorities apply in order: 1) take the greatest number of pieces; 2) if equal, capture with a king rather than a man; 3) if still equal, take more kings; 4) if still equal, choose the capture in which the kings come first. If the options are still equivalent, you may choose freely.
Played with all the rules of Russian draughts, compulsory capture included, but with the opposite goal: the first player left with no pieces or no moves wins. So it pays to offer your pieces to your opponent, who is forced to take them.
A player who, on their turn, has no pieces left or cannot move because all their pieces are blocked loses (in giveaway they win instead).
The game is drawn if the same position occurs for the third time with the same player to move. In Russian and giveaway draughts it is also drawn when both players have moved only kings for 15 moves in a row, with no captures and no man moves; in Italian draughts, when each player has made 40 king moves without captures or man moves.
Russian draughts also has official endgame rules: with three or more kings against a lone king you must capture it by your 15th move; with three pieces against a lone king on the main diagonal (a1–h8), by your 5th move; when both sides have kings and the balance of forces does not change (no captures, no crowning), the game is drawn after 5 moves each with 2–3 pieces left on the board, after 30 with 4–5 pieces and after 60 with 6–7.