Dama Italiana

The rules, in full

Dama Italiana is played on an eight-by-eight board, on the 32 squares of one colour. Each side starts with twelve men on its three nearest rows. You always have the light pieces at the bottom, and you always move first.

• A man moves one square diagonally forward, never backwards.
• A man captures forward only, jumping an enemy piece next to it onto the empty square beyond.
• A man may never capture a king. This is the rule that sets the Italian game apart.
• A king moves one square diagonally in any direction, and captures forwards or backwards. It does not slide across the board.
• Captures chain. If the capturing piece can jump again from where it lands, it must, until nothing more can be taken. No piece can be jumped twice.
• A man that reaches the far row becomes a king. If it gets there by capturing, the move stops there, even if the new king could take more.
• You lose when you cannot move, because your pieces are gone or all blocked.

Which capture you must make

Capturing is compulsory, and the game tells you so when you tap a piece that cannot move because a capture is waiting elsewhere. When several captures are possible, the Italian order of precedence applies, one step at a time:

1. Take the sequence that captures the most pieces.
2. If equal, capture with a king rather than a man.
3. If still equal, take the sequence that captures more kings.
4. If still equal, take the one that meets an enemy king first.

If captures are still level after that, the choice is yours. Only the squares you are allowed to reach are marked, so you never have to work it out by hand.

Strategy that actually helps

Crown a king early and look after it. Men cannot take kings, so your first king can only be captured by another king. Against an opponent with no king, it is untouchable.

Guard your back row. A man on your home row stops an enemy man being crowned on that square. Empty it early and you hand the opponent the one piece your men can never answer.

Use the precedence rules as a weapon. Your opponent is forced into the largest capture on the board. Offering one piece so that the forced capture leaves you a double capture in return is a normal Italian tactic, and the computer is bound by the same order.

Stay off the edges without a reason. A piece on the side has half the diagonals of one in the middle. It is safe there, and it does very little.

The computer opponent

There are five levels: Beginner, Easy, Steady, Strong and Hard. Tap the level button to cycle through them, or press 1 to 5. The game starts on Steady and remembers your choice. Higher levels look further ahead, and the three lowest also pick at random among moves almost as good as the best, so they leave you chances to find. The last move stays shaded on the board, so you can see what the computer just did.

A game is drawn when forty moves go by on each side with no capture and no man moving: a simple rule for ending a game nobody can win, not the full tournament draw rules. There is no undo.

A little history

Draughts on an eight-by-eight board has been played in Europe for centuries, and each country settled on its own rules. Italian draughts is the form played in Italy, with official rules published by the Federazione Italiana Dama. It shares its board and short king with English draughts, and differs in the two rules that shape the game most: men that cannot take kings, and a strict order of forced captures.

Common questions

Is it free? Yes. It runs in your browser, with no signup and nothing to download.

Does it work on a phone? Yes. Tap a piece to see where it can go, then tap the square. It works in portrait and landscape.

Can the king fly across the board? No. In Italian draughts it moves one square at a time. For the English rules, play Checkers.

Is there a score? When a game ends it scores 10 points for every piece you captured and, if you won, 100 more plus 50 for each level.