Checkers endgames: winning with kings
Plenty of checkers games are won in the middle and then thrown away at the end. Being a piece up is not the same as winning — you still have to finish the job. This is how.
Squares. The dark squares are numbered 1 to 32, four to a row. Red starts on 1 to 12, White on 21 to 32. The two double corners are the pairs of squares 1 and 5, and 28 and 32; the single corners are squares 4 and 29.
Getting your kings
In the endgame, kings decide almost everything. A king moves and jumps in all four diagonal directions, so it can chase, retreat and attack men from behind, where they cannot help each other.
- Count the race. If both sides are running for the back row, count how many moves each man needs. A king that arrives one move earlier can often stop the other man from crowning at all.
- Crown before you attack. A man a few squares from the far row is usually worth more pushed on than used in a fight.
- A crowning jump ends the turn. In this game, as in standard American checkers, a man crowned in the middle of a multiple jump stops there and moves as a king next turn.
- Bring the king back. A new king sits on the edge of the board. Get it back to the centre, where it does the most.
Two kings against one
Two kings beat one king, barring an accident. The lone king’s only hope is a double corner: there it can step back and forth between two squares, and a single attacking king cannot catch it. With two kings, though, you can drive it out.
Say Red has two kings and White’s lone king is shuttling between 1 and 5. Bring your kings to 6 and 10. Now wait until the lone king is on 5 and it is your move. Then:
6-1 — take the corner square. The lone king cannot go back to 1, so it must leave by 5-9. Then 1-5, and it has to keep running along the side: 9-13, 10-15, 13-17, 15-18, 17-13, 18-22, 13-9, and 5x14 catches it.
White’s replies in that line are its best; anything else is caught sooner. If the lone king is on 1 instead of 5 when you are ready, the same trick does not work straight away. Use the other square of the corner instead: 6-9 and, when it steps to 5 and back, 10-14 and 9-5, so that it is the lone king that has to leave the corner.
The idea is always the same: take one of the two corner squares yourself, so that the lone king has nowhere left to shuttle, and keep your second king where it covers its escape. Practise it against the computer until it is automatic. Played well, it takes fewer than twenty moves from almost any starting position.
Three against two
Three kings against two is normally a win, but not by chasing. The plan is to force an exchange: place your kings so that the only way your opponent can avoid losing a piece is to trade one for one. Once two of the pieces come off, you have two kings against one, and you know how to win that.
The defender will try to keep both kings in or near the two double corners, far apart, where it is hardest to set up a trade. Use your extra king to cut one of them off from its corner, then offer the swap on your terms.
The same thinking applies to any ending where you are a piece up: every even trade brings you closer to a position that wins by itself. One king against one, or two against two, is usually a draw — which is why the defender wants to avoid trades and you want to make them.
Endings with men on the board
With men still on the board, the old ideas from the middle game still count. Keep your back row long enough to stop the other side crowning. Count moves, because you cannot pass: in a blocked ending, the side that runs out of safe moves first has to give something up. And remember that a side with no legal move at all — every man blocked — has lost, even with pieces left on the board.
Some endings with just a few pieces have been studied for so long that they have names. First Position and Second Position are the most famous: exact wins that take many careful moves, and a good next step once the basics here feel easy.
When the game is a draw on this site
Grandpa’s Checkers plays standard American checkers, and a game is drawn in any of these ways:
- Forty-move rule. If each side makes forty moves with no capture and no man moved — only kings moving about — the game is a draw. Two kings against one is won well within that, if you know the method above.
- Repetition. If the same position, with the same side to move, comes up three times, the game is a draw.
- Agreement. Either player can offer a draw. Against a person, they can accept, or decline by simply playing on. The computer will not agree to a draw in the first ten moves each, or if it is ahead on material.
The other ways a game ends are not draws: a player with no legal move loses, and so does a player who resigns or, in a game against a person, lets the move clock run out.