If you’re a fan of International Draughts and want to up your game and win more quickly, you’re in luck. With these five tips and strategies, you can increase your chances of winning faster than ever before!

International Draughts allows you to demonstrate your skills more than American Checkers does, and it is the most prestigious version among the checkers family. To win an International Draughts game quickly, you must make full use of rules such as backward capturing, majority capturing, and the flying king.

#1 Use capturing backward

In international draughts, capturing backward is possible, unlike in American checkers. Use this rule to carry out shots and combinations.

Here’s the idea: white sacrifices a piece, and no matter which of black’s pieces takes it, white ends up recapturing four pieces in a row and promoting to a king in the process — including at least one capture that goes backward, something that would be illegal in American checkers. White comes out four pieces ahead and easily wins the game.

#2 Use the “majority capture” rule

The majority rule is one of the most important rules in the game. Thanks to it, you can create beautiful shots and force your opponent into capturing in a direction that helps you.

Picture a position where white looks like it’s in trouble and about to lose. It isn’t — white has set a trap. White plays a move that offers black a choice: capture two pieces and reach the king row, or capture three pieces without reaching it. Because the majority-capture rule forces black to take the larger number, black is compelled to capture three pieces backward instead of two forward — and that choice walks straight into a follow-up where white captures every one of black’s remaining pieces.

#3 Use your king to capture more pieces

Keep in mind that the king in international draughts is extremely powerful and can take down a lot of pawns at once. It can move and capture any number of squares along a diagonal, which makes it very hard to stop — it’s worth making an effort to get one.

Even when black holds a large material advantage, a single well-placed white king move can force black into a chain of forced captures that removes nearly all of black’s pieces in one turn. Finding that one forcing move is the hard part — but it’s often the only way to capture everything, which is part of what makes it satisfying to spot.

#4 Use your king to cut off your opponent’s pieces

It’s hard to overstate how strong a king is compared to a pawn — it’s said to be worth roughly three pawns. That’s why it’s usually (not always) better to have a king and two pawns than six pawns with no king.

A king can be used to physically cut off a diagonal, trapping several enemy pieces so they can never advance. In one typical pattern, a single king move seals off every black piece at once; even if black sacrifices a couple of pawns to try to promote a piece of its own, the white king is still faster and can chase down and cut off the path of the last remaining black piece before it reaches the king row. This kind of cut-off can happen in many configurations across the board.

#5 Use your opponent’s king!

This rule may sound strange, but since majority capturing is mandatory and a king can capture all the way down a diagonal, why not use those rules against your opponent?

Few players consider deliberately letting their opponent get a king. But it can work: white sacrifices two pawns in a row, letting black promote not just one but two pieces to kings. It looks disastrous for white — until white sacrifices yet another piece, and both black kings are forced into a double capture that leaves them exactly where white wants them. White then captures two pieces on the way to its own king, easily winning against black’s three remaining single pawns.

As you have seen, many methods exist for winning a game of international draughts quickly. We hope our tips bring you closer to victory — play a game of International Draughts and put them into practice!