Dama Linda — Checkers and draughts: how the game is | damalinda.com
Jumps are compulsory, the longest chain wins where the majority rule applies, and the far row turns a man into the dama.
A capture — the jump — is the heart of the game. When your man stands diagonally adjacent to an enemy man and the square directly beyond is empty, you leap over the enemy into that square and remove it from the board.
Jumps are compulsory in all four main variants. If any capture is available at the start of your turn, you must play one; a quiet move is legal only when no jump exists anywhere on your side of the board.
Chains: if the square you land on offers another jump, the same man jumps again, and again, until no further capture is available to it. You may not stop a chain early, whatever it costs you.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
The majority rule belongs to international draughts: when several chains are available you must take the longest one. A branch that captures 4 men beats a branch that captures 2, so count every branch to its end before committing to the first jump.
English draughts adds a twist new players miss: men may capture backwards even though they can never move backwards. A man that looks safely parked behind the front line can still be taken by a backward jump.
Promotion closes the loop. A man that reaches the far row — row 8 on an 8×8 board, row 10 on a 10×10 — is crowned the dama. In English draughts a man crowned during a jump stops on that square and the move ends as a king; from the next turn it moves by the variant's king rule, one square in English play or flying in international and Brazilian. The variants page compares king powers, and the setup page shows where the journey to the far row begins.
Further reading