Checkers Long Jump – An Effective Checkers Move

Only two moves are possible in a game of checkers: a single slide to an adjacent square and a jump. Jumping over an opposing player’s checkers piece, results in the player who has performed the jump to capturing the checkers piece that has been jumped over. That piece is then removed from the board and is effectively taken out of action.

Jumps can actually be performed any number of ways. A single jump, as the name implies, involves jumping over a single checkers piece of the opposing player. Aside from the single jump, all the other jump moves can be termed as checkers long jumps.

As impressive as a single jump is, a double jump is even more so, since it can reduce the opposing player’s checkers pieces by two in a single move. Another form of the checkers long jump, the triple jump, involves capturing three checkers pieces of the opposing player in a single turn. Likewise, capturing four checkers pieces is called a quadruple jump, and so on.

In a variation of the game called Turkish Checkers, the checkers pieces are allowed to move and perform jumps in an orthogonal direction, as opposed to diagonally. This results in virtually the same game, but on a larger board with a different shape.

Since players are allowed to move in an orthogonal manner, the checkers pieces can be moved forwards or sideways, resulting in three possible directions of movement. Just like Rooks in the game of Chess are able to make captures with a long jump, the kings in this variation of the game of checkers can capture the opposing player’s checkers pieces with a long jump as well. After each step in this multiple jump, the checkers piece that has been jumped over and captured is removed immediately from the board. The player that has at one or more kings left wins the game if the other player has only a single checkers piece left. In addition, the normal winning conditions for the game of checkers will apply with regard to eliminating or immobilizing the opposing player.

In Polish checkers, when kings execute a capture with a checkers long jump in this variation of the game, the regular checkers pieces can only execute a capture by moving two squares in an orthogonal manner, jumping over an adjacent checkers piece, albeit orthogonally. This is practically the same case as in the conventional English variation of the game of checkers, except that the move is orthogonal.