Italian Checkers

The Draughts Game Where the King Is Slow and Untouchable

Italian dama looks familiar for about four moves. Same 8x8 board, same 32 dark squares, same 12 men a side edging forward on the diagonal. Then someone gets a king, and the game you thought you were playing stops working. The king refuses to fly. Your men refuse to take it. Two capture lines are open and the board only accepts one of them, for reasons that have nothing to do with how many pieces each would win.

Those three surprises are the whole variant. Everything else is standard draughts. The board above plays the full ruleset against the computer at four strengths, or two people passing one device back and forth, with undo and hints in either mode and nothing to install.

Italian Dama Rules

The board is 8x8 and only the 32 dark squares are used. Each player sets out 12 men on the dark squares of their three nearest rows, leaving the two middle rows empty. The board sits mirrored: the double corner is on each player's left, so the near-left corner square is light, exactly as in the Spanish and Portuguese games. That is orientation only and changes no rule. White moves first, then turns alternate.

Men are strictly forward pieces:

• A man moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square.
• A man captures diagonally forward only, jumping an adjacent enemy piece and landing on the empty square directly beyond. Backward captures do not exist here.
• A man may never capture a king. An enemy king is not a target for a man in any position; only another king can take it.

A man that finishes a move on the far row is crowned. An Italian king is short: it moves one square diagonally in any of the four directions, forward or backward, and captures by jumping an adjacent piece to the square directly beyond it. It does not fly, and it never covers a diagonal at range. Kings capture men and kings alike.

Capturing is compulsory: while a jump is available anywhere on the board, no quiet move is legal, and a sequence carries on as long as further captures are there to be made. Which sequence you play is not your choice, though. The Italian quality ladder ranks them, and each rung only settles the ties left by the one above:

1. The sequence capturing the most pieces.
2. Among equals, a sequence made with a king beats one made with a man. This rung is about the capturing piece, not the pieces captured.
3. Among those, the sequence capturing the most kings.
4. Among those, the sequence that captures a king earliest.

If two lines are still tied after all four rungs, take whichever you prefer.

Jumped pieces stay where they are until the sequence ends and come off the board afterwards. While they sit there they block the squares they occupy, and the practical rule that follows is that the same piece can never be jumped twice in one turn.

Crowning stops a capture dead. A man that reaches the far row in the middle of a sequence does not carry on: the sequence ends there, the man is crowned, and the new king can only be played after the opponent has moved. A long capture that runs through the far row is therefore worth less than it looks, which is the reverse of International and Turkish play, where the man keeps going.

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

• Threefold repetition. The same position, with the same player to move, appears for a third time.
• No progress. If 40 moves pass for each player, 80 turns altogether, with no capture made and no man moved, the game is drawn. Any capture or any man move resets the count.

The second of those is our house law and we would rather say so plainly. It exists so a dead position ends instead of running forever. The Federazione Italiana Dama tournament rulebook was not among the sources we worked from, and we are not claiming 40 is its number. Threefold repetition is standard everywhere and sits outside that caveat.

What the Two Signature Rules Do to a Game

Take the two together and Italian dama plays unlike anything else in the family. A king that moves one square at a time should be a weak piece. Here it is not, because twelve of the pieces facing it cannot lay a finger on it. A lone king can park in front of a column of enemy men and none of them can solve the problem without a king of their own.

The ladder then pulls in the opposite direction. It keeps calling your king into action, since a capture made with a king outranks the same capture made with a man, which drags your best piece out of safety and into whatever square the rule chooses. Owning a king in this game is an advantage the rules also keep spending for you.

Where the Game Comes From

The game is called dama, or dama italiana, and Italian Checkers in English. Our sources describe it as documented in Italy since the medieval period, and BoardGameGeek dates it to 1400. Competitive play is governed by the Federazione Italiana Dama, which runs the tournaments in Italy. Children often play a shorter version with 8 men, and Dama Triestina applies the same rules on a 10x10 board as a regional game of Trieste.

Further back than that the record thins out. Mats Winther notes that draughts has been played at least since medieval times and is believed to derive from the Arabic game Alquerque. That is as far as our material goes, so it is as far as we go.

Where It Sits in the Family

Against the Spanish board on the home page the family resemblance is obvious and the split is sharp. Both mirror the board, both keep men forward-only, both make capture compulsory. Then Spanish kings fly, Spanish men are allowed to take a king, and Spanish ties are settled by counting captured kings and nothing else. Italian kings walk, Italian men cannot touch a king, and Italian ties run the full four-rung ladder. The Spanish rules page lays that version out if you want them side by side.

At the other end of the family, Turkish dama abandons the diagonal altogether, and Brazilian damas keeps the diagonal but lets men capture backward and kings fly. Our overview of the several games called dama maps the whole tree, and the comparison of kings across traditions puts the Italian king next to the two that outrun it. There is also an Italian-language version of this board.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Italian dama?

Italian dama, or dama italiana, is the Italian branch of draughts: an 8x8 board, 32 dark squares, 12 men a side, and diagonal play throughout. Two rules set it apart from every neighbour. A man may never capture a king, and when several capture lines are available a four-step quality ladder decides which one you are obliged to play. BoardGameGeek dates the game to 1400.

Why is the near-left corner square light?

Because the Italian board is mirrored. The double corner sits on each player's left rather than their right, which puts a light square in the near-left corner. Spanish and Portuguese draughts use the same orientation. It changes how the board looks and nothing about how it plays, but set the board the other way round and every diagonal you have memorised lands somewhere else.

Can a man capture a king in Italian dama?

No, and this is the rule people remember the game by. A man may never jump a king, however that king is placed and however good the capture would be. Only another king can take a king. Kings themselves capture anything, men and kings alike, which makes the first king on the board untouchable by half the pieces facing it.

Do Italian kings fly?

No. An Italian king is short: it moves one square diagonally in any of the four directions, and it captures by jumping an adjacent piece to the square directly beyond it. It never travels the length of a diagonal the way a Spanish or International king does. Promotion here buys you direction, not distance.

Which capture do I have to play?

A four-step ladder decides, and each step only breaks the ties left by the one above it. First, the sequence taking the most pieces. Then, among equals, a sequence made with a king beats one made with a man. Then the sequence taking the most kings. Then the sequence that takes a king earliest. If two lines are still level after all four, the choice is yours. Our Italian-language piece on the capture ladder works through it step by step.

Can I play Italian dama against other people?

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