Checkers Games for Children

Fox and Hounds

• One player is the fox and has only one piece, which can move forward and backward. The other player has four checkers (the hounds) that can only move forward. There is no jumping. The fox starts on any dark square on the back row of his side. The hounds start on the four dark squares on the back row of the other side. The fox wins if he gets through the hounds and all the way across the board. The hounds win if the fox is trapped and can not move. Players usually switch sides every few games.

Flying Kings

• The Flying Kings variation appears in Spanish checkers and Russian checkers, but isn't allowed in American checkers tournaments. It plays like a standard checkers game until the first checker is crowned. That checker becomes a flying king, which, like a bishop in chess, can move as much as it wants to in any unblocked diagonal direction. It can jump any piece in its path as long as at least one space remains after the last jump.

Checkers Gomoku

• Checkers Gomoku is a version of the Japanese game played on the corners of the squares instead of the squares themselves. Gomoku is played on a bigger board, but Checkers Gomoku uses an eight-by-eight board like checkers. If a player gets five checkers in a row--horizontally, vertically or diagonally--he wins. If both players exhaust all 12 checkers and can't score a win, the second stage of play starts. In the second stage, players take turns moving checkers one square either horizontally or vertically. In the second stage, play continues until someone gets five checkers in a row.

Suicide Checkers

• Suicide checkers plays exactly like standard checkers with one exception: players try to lose checkers. The player who runs out first wins. This game could only work in checkers, where players are required to take jumps. It the board reaches a state where no legal moves are possible, the player with the fewest checkers on the board wins.