International Draughts - Free 10x10 International Draughts: Flying Kings, Friends or AI Bots

International Checkers on a 10x10 Board

International draughts is the tournament version of checkers, played on a 10x10 board with 20 pieces per side, and this page runs it free in any browser, versus a friend or a computer opponent. It is the ruleset used for the world championship, written down by the FMJD, the World Draughts Federation, and it turns the quiet American game into something much sharper. Ordinary pieces capture in every diagonal direction, a crowned piece can cross the entire board in one move, and when you have a choice of captures the rules choose for you.

The game also goes by Polish draughts, the name it went by for most of its history in Europe. If you grew up on checkers, the goal is unchanged. Take every enemy piece, or lock your opponent out of any legal move.

International Draughts Rules

Your starting pieces are called men, and a man that finishes a move on the last row of the board becomes a king. On the 10x10 board each player begins with 20 men filling their first four rows of dark squares, and white makes the first move.

A man moves one square diagonally toward the enemy side, onto an empty dark square. Capturing means hopping over an enemy piece that sits on the next diagonal square, landing on the empty square directly behind it, and taking that piece off the board. If the piece that just landed can hop again, the same turn continues, and a single move can clear out several enemy pieces in a row. That whole sequence is called a capture chain.

Four rules separate this game from the 8x8 American version:

Games can also end without a winner. A third occurrence of an identical position, or 100 straight turns with no capture anywhere, ends the game as a draw. Run out of legal moves before that and you lose, exactly as if your last piece had been taken.

Flying Kings and the Majority Capture Rule

The flying king is the rule people remember. Park a king on an open diagonal and it threatens every square along it, so a piece ten squares away is in exactly as much danger as a piece next door. The capture works at range too: a king can begin a jump from the far end of a diagonal, and it finishes one square past the man it took.

The majority rule is the one that wins games. Suppose one of your men can hop a single enemy while another can start a chain through two. In American checkers you would pick whichever helps you. Here the two-piece chain is your only legal move, a fact we checked directly against the Foony rules engine. Strong players build on this: they give you a man on purpose, because the rules force your reply, and the position after your forced capture is one they already calculated. Watching a plan like that unfold against you is the moment international draughts makes sense.

10x10 Checkers vs the 8x8 Family

Foony runs one checkers engine with every rule exposed, so the named variants sit side by side in the same lobby. Here is how the 10x10 game compares to its relatives:

The 10x10 board is the size the tournament world settled on. Enough room for flying kings and five-piece chains to matter, small enough that a game still finishes in one sitting.

Play International Draughts on Foony

Hit play up top and the international preset is already loaded, dropping you straight into a 10x10 game. From the main checkers page, press Play with Friends and pick the International Draughts card from the Presets tab in the room settings, or press Play Bots and choose it under Game Variant. Send the room link to a friend and they join from any browser, phone or desktop, with nothing to install.

Solo practice runs against the computer at one of seven strengths, from Trivial through Grandmaster, with the whole match played at the strength the host picked. Moves run on a 25 second timer by default so games keep a brisk tournament pace, though the host can allow more time or drop the clock entirely. Hosts who want a house variant can open the Advanced tab and flip any individual rule, from board size to the majority rule itself.

International Draughts Strategy

Count before you touch a piece. Since every capture is forced and the biggest chain always wins, the tactics in this game are math you can do in advance. Before each quiet move, ask what captures it creates for both sides, because any man you leave hoppable decides your opponent's next move for them.

Watch the open diagonals. A flying king on an open line controls it entirely, so the defensive habit that matters most is keeping long diagonals broken with your own men. The corner-to-corner line is the one players fight over hardest.

Plan the last hop of a chain. Crowning requires your move to end on the last row, so a chain that only passes through it earns you nothing. When you can steer a capture chain, steer it to end on that row.

Spend the opening building, not trading. With 20 men each, an early one-for-one trade barely dents the position, and reflex trades mostly help your opponent. Build a wall of men that advances together and keep two guards on your back row until you need them in the middlegame.

Coming from American Checkers

Everything you already know still works here, it just moves faster. Forced jumps become forced chains, kings go from moving one square to crossing the whole board, and the extra 36 squares give plans more room. If the 10x10 game feels like too much board on day one, warm up with classic checkers on Foony, then come back and see why the rest of the world plays it this way.