Your first game of draughts on checkers3d

Start a game with no account: choose the rules and an opponent, move a piece, read the dots and rings on the board, take back or resign, and decide what to do next.

You can play here without an account, a download or even a name. This page walks through a game from the setup screen to the last move, with example positions in American checkers. The screens work the same way in all four rule sets.

Set up the game

Open Play, where the panel offers three ways to play.

Against the computer starts at once. Each of the eleven opponents is a character played by the rules engine, not a person, and the number beside a name is only a rough label. These games have no clock and change no rating.
Pass and play puts two people at one screen, taking turns.
Play online looks for another player, and can wait until you know the moves.

Choose a rule set under Rules; four rule sets compared helps if you cannot decide. Against the computer, also choose Your colour and a name under Opponent, starting with the group called Just learned, which has the lowest numbers. Your colour sits at the bottom of the board, while the diagrams on these pages always have White at the bottom. Then press the big button at the foot of the panel: Play Téo, with the name you chose, or Play for pass and play.

Pick a piece up and put it down

Click or tap a piece, then the square it should go to, or drag it there. With a keyboard, the arrow keys move between the dark squares, and Enter or Space picks up a piece and puts it down. A piece that will not lift has no legal move right now.

White to move: the man on 22 can go only to 17 or 18, so in a game those squares show a dot once you pick it up.

What the marks on the board mean

A dot on an empty square is where the piece you picked up can go.
A ring around a piece marks a piece that can capture. Because a capture is compulsory, only ringed pieces can be picked up, and A capture is compulsory appears beside the board too.
A ring on an empty square is where a capturing piece can land.
Two tinted squares show where the last move started and ended.

You can switch the dots and rings off with Show legal moves in board settings.

White to move: the men on 22 and 24 can each capture, so in a game both wear the ring and the man on 30 cannot be picked up. You choose between 22x15 and 24x15.

When two routes end on the same square but take different pieces, press that square and the board rings the next landing squares, so you can pick the route.

White to move: 23x14x7 and 23x16x7 both end on square 7, so you press 7 and then decide with 14 or 16.

Take back, draw and resign

Take back undoes your last move, and the computer's reply with it, until the game is over. In pass and play it steps back one move at a time.
Offer a draw works on your turn against the computer, which accepts only if the engine scores the position level or worse for it, or clearly worse until ten moves each have been played. In pass and play the other player chooses Accept the draw or Play on.
Resign asks you to confirm, then gives the game to your opponent.

2D or 3D

Board view switches between 2D and 3D at any moment without touching the position, and the same clicks, drags and keys work on both. If the 3D board cannot run smoothly on your device, the game goes back to 2D and tells you.

After the game

The panel says who won and why. A rematch button, such as Rematch as Black, plays again with the colours swapped, and New game goes back to the setup screen. Download PDN saves the game as a text file. To go back through it with an evaluation beside you, open the analysis board, choose PDN, paste the text and press Load position. At any time, press a move in the Moves tab to see that position; the Rules tab beside it lists the rules in force.

For those rules in full, read how to play American checkers or the page for your rule set, and try them on a board in the lessons.