Play Italian Checkers

How to Play Italian Checkers

Italian Checkers (Dama, or Dama Italiana) is played on an 8×8 board with 12 pieces per side. White moves first. It shares the short king and forward-only men of the American game, but adds two rules of its own: a man may never capture a king, and equal-length capture lines are ranked by a four-step quality ladder.

Rules

• Men move and capture diagonally forward only — no backward captures
• A man may never capture a king; kings capture men and kings alike
• Kings are short — one square diagonally in any direction, and they jump only an adjacent piece
• Capturing is mandatory, and you must take the line that captures the most pieces
• Among equal-length lines: capturing with a king beats capturing with a man, then the most kings taken, then the line taking a king earliest
• A man that reaches the far row mid-capture stops there and crowns
• The board is mirrored: the double corner sits on each player's left, so the near-left corner square is light

Winning

Capture all opponent pieces, or leave them with no legal moves.

You can also play against a real opponent: hit Play Online to be paired with another player, or create a private game and share the link or code with a friend. No account needed.

Italian Checkers is a close cousin of American Checkers and a distant one of the Spanish game — see how the whole family relates in our guide to checkers variants, or browse every strategy lesson.