Portuguese Damas

Spanish Mechanics, Portuguese Clocks

Anyone meeting Portuguese damas after Brazilian damas is usually surprised. The two countries share a language and a name for the game, but not a rulebook: Portugal plays in the Spanish branch of the family, where a pedra may never jump backward and a promotion in the middle of a capture ends the turn on the spot. Learn one and you have to unlearn a reflex to play the other.

What genuinely belongs to Portugal is the clock. Its rule book halves the count that ends a stalled game and puts a deadline on the three-dama ending, so positions that would grind on for another hour elsewhere get settled. The board above enforces both counts. It also gives you the computer at four strengths, a two-player mode for a single device, undo and a hint button.

Portuguese Damas Rules

The game uses an 8x8 board and only its 32 dark squares. Both players fill the dark squares of their three nearest rows with 12 pedras, leaving the middle two rows empty. The board is mirrored, so the corner square on your left is light, not dark. That is a matter of layout only and changes nothing about movement. White has the first move.

A pedra is strictly a forward piece:

• It steps one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square.
• It captures diagonally forward as well, jumping an adjacent enemy piece and landing on the empty square directly behind it. An enemy piece sitting diagonally behind a pedra is safe from it.

Capturing is compulsory. If a jump exists anywhere on the board you have to take one, and no quiet move is legal while one is available. With several sequences on offer, length decides first: only a line that collects the greatest number of pieces may be played. Portuguese damas then adds a filter Brazilian damas does without. Should two of those longest lines collect the same count, the tie goes to whichever takes more damas, and that line becomes the only legal one. Tie on damas as well and you are finally free to pick either.

Captured pieces are not lifted as you go. They stay on their squares until the sequence ends, blocking the diagonals, which is why the same piece can never be jumped twice in one turn.

Promotion is immediate and final. The moment a pedra lands on the far row it becomes a dama, and if it got there in the middle of a capture the turn ends right there, remaining jumps or not. Once crowned, a dama flies: it slides any number of empty squares along a diagonal, and it captures at range by gliding up to an enemy piece, jumping it if the square beyond is clear, and landing on any empty square further down that diagonal. It may then change diagonal and carry on if more captures are available.

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

• Threefold repetition. The same position, with the same player to move, appears for a third time.
• The 20-move count. If 20 moves pass for each player, 40 turns altogether, with no capture and no pedra moved, the game is drawn. That is half the count the Spanish, Brazilian and Filipino boards on this site run. Any capture, or any move by an uncrowned piece, sets it back to zero.
• The Forçada. When one side is reduced to a single dama and the other has exactly three pieces, all of them damas, the stronger side has 12 moves each, 24 turns, to win. Miss the deadline and the game is drawn.

About the Forçada

Both counting rules come from one document: Regras Básicas do Jogo de Damas Portuguesas, the Portuguese federation's rule book, homologated on 25 January 2025. Ratrout's survey of world draughts variants records the three-against-one deadline separately, as a draw whenever the player holding three kings cannot win inside 12 moves. Two sources landing on the same number is reassuring when you are about to code it into an engine.

One honest caveat about the version played here. The federation text attaches a positional condition to the Forçada, requiring at least one of the three damas to stand on the rio. The engine behind this board does not test for that. It starts counting the moment the material reads three damas against a lone dama, which is the simpler condition, and we would rather say so than claim a precision the board does not have.

Where It Sits in the Family

Draughts variants are usually mapped by two questions: can a man jump backward, and can a king fly? Portuguese damas answers no and yes, which puts it in the same group as Spanish dama, with Argentinian and Moroccan play nearby. Brazilian damas answers yes and yes, which drops it in the international group instead, next to Filipino dama and 10x10 international draughts.

That is worth holding on to, because the language does not follow the rules. Portugal and Brazil both say damas while describing two different games. The backward-jumping version has its own page here. The tradition Portuguese rules descend from is the Spanish board on the home page, and our article on the several games called dama traces the whole tree.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Portuguese damas?

Portuguese damas is the federation-rule form of draughts played in Portugal, on an 8x8 board with 12 pieces a side. Its mechanics sit in the Spanish branch of the family: a pedra walks and jumps forward only, a promoted piece becomes a dama that flies the whole diagonal, and captures are compulsory. Two counting rules from the Portuguese rule book set it apart, one for stalled middlegames and one for the three-dama ending.

How is Portuguese damas different from Spanish damas?

Move for move, they are the same game. Forward-only men, flying kings, compulsory capture, most pieces then most kings, stop-and-crown promotion and the mirrored board are shared exactly. The differences are both about when a game ends: Portugal cuts the no-progress count in half, from 40 moves by each side to 20, and adds the Forçada, which gives a player holding three damas against a lone dama 12 moves each to finish the job. The Spanish board is here for comparison, with its own rules page.

What is the Forçada rule?

It is the Portuguese endgame clock. Once one player is down to a single dama and the other holds exactly three, all of them damas, the stronger side has 12 moves each to force the win. If the twenty-fourth turn passes with the lone dama still on the board, the game is scored as a draw. The board on this page counts those turns for you and announces the draw when the count runs out.

How is Portuguese damas different from Brazilian damas?

They share a language and almost nothing else. Brazilian pedras jump backward as well as forward; Portuguese pedras only ever capture forward. A Brazilian man that reaches the far row mid-capture keeps jumping as a man, while a Portuguese one halts there and is crowned on the spot. Brazil ranks capture lines by piece count alone, Portugal breaks a tie by counting damas, and the two boards are even laid out in opposite orientations. You can try the Brazilian board straight after this one.

Why is the Portuguese board mirrored?

Because that is how the Portuguese rule book sets it up. Its first diagram numbers square 1 as the dark square at White's bottom-right, which puts a light square in each player's near-left corner and the double corner on the left rather than the right. Nothing about how a piece moves changes; the whole board is simply turned, exactly as it is for Spanish and Filipino play.

Can I play Portuguese damas against other people?

Not on this page, which offers the computer at four strengths or two people sharing one device. Our sister site runs Portuguese checkers against live opponents at Checkers Online.