Accelerated Draughts

draughts with ‘deferred leapfrog capture’

Keywords: Accelerated Draughts, International Draughts, checkers, dammen, jeu de dames, damspel, tammi, damspil, Damespiel, Dame, Dama, Damas, draughts.

Accelerated Draughts follows the same rules as International Draughts, except that an already jumping Man may capture a distant enemy Man on the diagonal (“deferred leapfrog capture”). A Man that stands still may only capture a nearby piece. It is natural — a piece that gains momentum becomes stronger, like a rugby or hockey player. A Man always lands on the next square behind the captured piece, also during capture sequences.


Here Black sacrifices five Men, only to capture five enemy Men back. Since play takes place over the whole board, it makes sense to play on such a big board (South African Dumm board, 14x14, here).

Piece movement

A Man steps diagonally forwards. It captures, by the short leap, in all diagonal directions. A King slides and captures in all diagonal directions over any distance. It also jumps to capture, but only one Man at a time. A King may “fly” over empty squares (“long King”).

A Man promotes to King at the last rank. If a Man makes an intermediate landing on a promotion square and can continue capturing, it does not promote. Capture is mandatory, and one must continue capturing as long as possible. It is mandatory to select the longest capturing line. Captured pieces are removed only after the move is finished. The goal is to capture all the opponent’s pieces. Stalemate counts as win.

In International Draughts, it is difficult to win with three Kings against one. Diverse halt rules have been proposed as a remedy. The Accelerated rule is preferably combined with any of four different halt rules (cf. Winther, 2017a, here). Since the game develops fast, it can be played on any size board; 8x8/12 Men per player; 10x10/20 Men per player; 12x12/24 Men per player; 14x14/35 Men per player.


See also:

Winther, M. (2015). ‘International/Polish Checkers Variants’. (here)

  --------  (2017a). ‘Draughts with Deferred Backwards Capture’. (here)

  --------  (2017). ‘Swedish Draughts’. (here)

  --------  (2017). ‘Frisian Draughts 2.0’. (here)

  --------  (2017). ‘Leapfrog Checkers’. (here)

  --------  (2017). ‘Vanguard Draughts’. (here)

☛  You can download my free Accelerated Draughts program here (updated 2020-10-07), but you must own the software Zillions of Games to be able to run it. (I recommend the download version.)

© Mats Winther, 2017.