Play Moroccan Checkers

How to Play Moroccan Checkers

Moroccan Checkers (Dama) is played on an 8×8 board with 12 pieces per side. White moves first. Played across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, it is the North African branch of the Spanish family — forward-only men and flying kings, but with a plain maximum-capture rule and no most-kings tiebreak.

Rules

• Men move and capture diagonally forward only — no backward captures
• Capturing is mandatory, and you must take the line that captures the most pieces
• Equal-length capture lines are all legal — unlike Spanish, there is no most-kings tiebreak
• A man that reaches the far row mid-capture stops there and crowns
• Kings are "flying" — they move and capture any distance along a diagonal
• 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.

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