Arab Checkers

The Dama Played From Beirut to Manama

Across the Levant and the Gulf, "dama" means this game: an 8x8 board with no chequer on it, 32 men packed onto four ranks, and not a single diagonal move anywhere in the rules. Pieces travel along files and ranks. A crowned piece, the dama itself, works like a chess rook. If your instincts were trained on a diagonal board, the first half hour will feel like reading a familiar alphabet in the wrong direction.

It is worth the adjustment. No piece is ever marooned on the wrong colour, because there is no wrong colour, and one crowned piece watches a whole rank and a whole file at once. The board above plays the full ruleset against the computer at four strengths, or between two people passing one device. Undo and hints work in both, and nothing installs.

Arab Dama Rules

The board is 8x8 and every one of its 64 squares is in play. The chequer is decoration in this game rather than information, so the board here is drawn plain with grid lines. Each player sets out 16 men (حجر) filling their second and third rows, counting from their own edge, and leaves the back row empty. White moves first, then turns alternate.

A man travels three ways and no more:

• It moves one square straight forward, or one square to the left or right, onto an empty square. Never backward, never diagonally.
• It captures the same three ways, jumping an adjacent enemy piece and landing on the empty square directly beyond it.

A man that finishes a move on the far row is crowned and becomes a dama. The dama slides any number of empty squares along a rank or a file, in all four directions, and it captures by jumping a single enemy piece on that line and landing on any empty square further along it, then carrying on if more captures are available. Which of those landing squares you pick is usually the whole decision — it is what decides whether the next jump falls inside the piece's reach.

Capturing is compulsory. While any jump exists on the board no quiet move is legal, and where several capture sequences are available you must play one that takes the greatest number of pieces. Piece count is the entire test. This variant has no most-kings tiebreak: two lines that take four pieces each are equally legal, even where one of them collects a dama and the other collects four men.

Jumped pieces leave the board the moment they are jumped, not at the end of the turn. Inside a long sequence that changes the arithmetic: a later jump may cross, or land on, a square that held a piece you took two jumps ago. Nothing is ever jumped twice, because nothing that has been taken comes back.

One restriction shapes those sequences. Between two jumps a capturing piece may not turn straight back on itself — it can carry on, or turn left, or turn right, but a 180 degree about-turn along the line it just came down is illegal.

Crowning waits for the end of the move. A man reaching the far row in the middle of a capture does not stop and promote there; it keeps taking pieces sideways along that row as a man, and is crowned only if the sequence happens to end on that row. Combine that with the longest-capture rule and a sharp consequence falls out: a man that lands on the far row beside an enemy dama it can take must take it first, and the crown waits that much longer.

You win by capturing everything your opponent has, or by leaving them with no legal move when their turn arrives. Three rules end a game as a draw instead:

• Threefold repetition. The same position, with the same player to move, appears for a third time.
• One piece each. The moment both sides are down to a single piece, the game is drawn on the spot.
• No progress. If 40 moves pass for each player, 80 turns altogether, with no capture and no move by an uncrowned man, the game is drawn. Either resets the count to zero.

Two of those three are our house law, and we would rather say so plainly. Threefold repetition is standard. The one-piece-each draw and the 40-move count are what this site applies so a dead position ends instead of running forever; no federation rulebook was among the sources we worked from, and we are not claiming these numbers are anyone else's.

Two Customs This Board Does Not Enforce

Ratrout records two things that sit beside the rules rather than inside them. The first is that warning is optional: you may warn your opponent to move a piece before you take it, or you may say nothing. The second is local to Bahrain — a player under threat must first move the threatened man if that is possible, and may not instead move a safe man in order to threaten or capture a piece of the opponent's.

Neither is implemented here. The board plays the common rules of the Levant and the Gulf, identical to Turkish dama: any legal move is accepted, subject only to the compulsory maximum capture. If your table plays the Bahraini way, the engine will not hold you to it.

Where the Game Is Played

The game goes by Arab Dama, by plain Dama, and by Bahraini Checkers. It is played across the Levant and the Gulf, Bahrain included, and Ratrout sets its rules down as the same rules known as Turkish.

For the shared Turkish branch, the game is common across the Middle East. BoardGameGeek records tournaments in Turkey, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Uzbekistan, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Estonia, and dates the game to 1400. Mats Winther reports the argument that Turkish checkers grew out of Gothic checkers, an older European game — an argument that is put rather than settled. Beyond that our sources are silent, so we stop there. Ratrout adds one practical note: a chequered board is sometimes used instead of a plain one, and it makes no difference, since no rule refers to the colour of a square.

Where It Sits Among the Damas

Draughts variants are usually sorted by two questions: does a man jump backward, and does a king fly. Arab dama slips out of that grid, because the question underneath both — which way does a piece travel — has a different answer here. It shares compulsory maximum capture with almost every tradition, then routes everything along ranks and files.

Put it beside the Spanish board on the home page and the contrast teaches itself. Spanish men walk and jump on 32 dark squares, captured pieces stay put until the turn ends, and promotion in mid-capture stops the turn dead. Arab play reverses all three. Turkish dama is this same board under its other name, Italian dama shows what a short king looks like, and the several games called dama maps the whole tree. The Arabic-language version of this board lives at /ar/.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Arab dama?

Arab dama is the draughts game of the Levant and the Gulf, played on all 64 squares of an 8x8 board with 16 men a side and no diagonal movement in it anywhere. Men step and jump straight ahead or sideways; a crowned piece slides along ranks and files like a chess rook. It also answers to plain Dama and to Bahraini Checkers.

Is Arab dama the same game as Turkish dama?

In the moves and the captures, yes. Ratrout records Arab dama as the same rules as Turkish, which is why this board and the Turkish dama board run one shared configuration. What differs is custom rather than rule: warning your opponent before you take a piece is optional, and in Bahrain a player whose man is threatened must move that man if they can. This board does not enforce the Bahraini custom.

Why is the board drawn without dark squares?

Because the chequer would carry no information. In a diagonal game the pattern marks the 32 squares a piece can ever reach, so it earns its place. Arab dama uses all 64, and no rule in the game mentions the colour of a square, so the board here is drawn plain with grid lines. Ratrout notes that a chequered board is used as an alternative, and it changes nothing about play.

How does the dama (king) move?

Like a rook. It slides any number of empty squares along a rank or a file, in all four directions, and it captures by jumping one enemy piece on that line and landing on any empty square beyond it. You choose where it stops, and that choice usually decides whether the sequence carries on.

Do I have to play the longest capture?

Yes. While a capture exists you must take one, and among the sequences available you must play one that collects the most pieces. Piece count is the only test here. Two lines that take four each are both legal even where one of them takes a dama, so there is no most-kings tiebreak to remember.

Can I play Arab dama against other people?

Not on this page, which offers the computer at four strengths or two people sharing one device, with undo and hints in both. Our sister site runs the same rules against live opponents at Checkers Online.