Turkish Draughts

How to play

Win by capturing the opposing army or leaving it without a legal move; repeated positions and the shared versioned non-progress limit resolve positions that cannot advance.

• Each player places sixteen men across two complete rows of an eight-by-eight board, with the home row empty. Every square is playable, and the first army advances toward the opposite edge.
• Men move one square forward or sideways and capture forward or sideways by jumping; they do not make ordinary backward moves or backward captures. Kings slide and capture over orthogonal ranks and files. Every capture is compulsory, a sequence continues while possible, and a legal choice must take the maximum available number of opposing pieces before promotion at the far rank.
• Win by capturing the opposing army or leaving it without a legal move; repeated positions and the shared versioned non-progress limit resolve positions that cannot advance.

Strategy tips

• Maintain lateral support across ranks, prevent an enemy man from reaching a clear promotion file, and calculate how removing each jumped piece opens a new orthogonal line for the rest of a maximum capture.
• Diagonal intuition from English or international draughts is wrong here: Turkish pieces use rows and columns, men cannot capture backward, and the longest legal capture sequence takes priority.
• Use a flying king to control both a rank and file without approaching an ambush square, keep mobile men from blocking one another, and count forced landing lanes before initiating contact.