How to play Canadian Checkers?

Canadian checkers, also known as Canadian draughts, is a variant of the traditional game of checkers that is popular in Canada and some other parts of the world. The game may look intimidating because it's one of the largest Checkers variants but the rules are the same as International Draughts applied to a 12x12 board. Brazilian Draughts has the same rules as Canadian and International Draughts but is played on an 8x8 board. In this article, we will take a look at the rules of Canadian checkers.

Board and Setup

The board for Canadian checkers is similar to a standard checkers board but with 144 squares arranged in an 12x12 grid. The game is played on the dark squares of the board and oriented so that the bottom right corners are dark squares. Each player starts with 20 pieces, which are placed on the dark squares of the first three rows on their side of the board.

Movement

In Canadian checkers, pieces move diagonally, one square at a time. If a player's piece reaches the opposite end of the board, it becomes a "king" and gains the ability to move both forward and backward on the diagonal.

Capturing

Capturing is an important aspect of Canadian checkers. When a player's piece lands on a square adjacent to an opponent's piece, and there is an empty square on the other side, the player must "jump" over the opponent's piece and capture it. If there are multiple captures available, the player must choose the one that captures the most pieces. If a player can make a capture, they must do so. If a player's piece lands on the last row of the board and there is an opponent's piece on the adjacent square, the player can choose to "crown" their piece by promoting it to a king, or they can continue moving without crowning the piece. If a player's piece is captured, it is removed from the board.

Winning the Game

A player wins the game by capturing all of their opponent's pieces, or by putting their opponent in a position where they cannot make a move.

Draws

In Canadian checkers, a draw occurs when the same position occurs three times with the same player to move, or when a player has no pieces left on the board, but their opponent cannot capture their last piece.