Daily Checkers Puzzle

One position a day, from a real game — red to play and win a piece · Updated August 10, 2026

One position a day, from a game that was actually played. Red to play and win a piece — and the move that does it usually gives a piece away first. Play it below; the board checks your answer immediately.

What makes a puzzle good — we measured it

Most puzzle collections are positions somebody liked. These were filtered by a machine and then judged by a human, in that order — and the judging changed what the machine looks for.

Fifty candidate positions were reviewed blind: the reviewer could play each one but could not see which property it carried, so the verdict was about the position and not about the label. Twenty-four were kept. What separated them was not difficulty, piece count or elegance. It was whether a wrong move was punished.

That is why sharpness is a requirement here, not a nice-to-have. A puzzle where the wrong answer costs you nothing is a puzzle where the right answer meant nothing.

Then we measured the positions themselves — and rebuilt them

The blind review asked whether a wrong move was punished. It never asked whether the position looked like a game of checkers. When we finally counted, the answer was uncomfortable:

That was not a filter behaving badly. It was the goal. The old recipe asked for a forced win of the game in three or four moves — and winning the game means capturing all twelve enemy pieces, which cannot happen in four moves unless the board is nearly empty. No amount of filtering could have produced a full board, because the target made one impossible. What came out were composed studies, and they looked like it.

A real checkers tactic is not "win the game in three". It is a shot: you give a piece away, black is forced to take it, and you take back more than you gave. That happens with twenty pieces on the board — in the middlegame, where games are actually decided. So the target changed from mate to material, and the source changed with it.

Every position now comes from a game that was actually played out, so it is one you could have reached. And the sacrifice is a requirement, not a hope — without it the search cheerfully returns "your opponent left a piece hanging, take it", which is not a puzzle. Measured on real play: of the positions that contain a forced material gain at all, roughly half fail that test and are thrown away.

Everything published still has to survive the machine: the gain has to hold against every defence, exactly one first move may achieve it, and at least one other move has to hand material back. The same code that accepted a position is the code that judges your move on the board above — not a copy of it, the same file.

Puzzle archive

A new position appears at midnight UTC, so everyone is solving the same one on the same day. The previous thirty are here; solved days carry a tick.

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Run out? Try the endgame exercises

The puzzle above is a tactic: something is there to be won, and you find it. Our sixty endgame exercises ask the opposite question, and most of them ask you to hold a draw — the position is level, exactly one move keeps it that way, and every other move loses.

That is an exercise no other puzzle collection can set. A search program cannot prove a draw; it can only fail to find a win, which is not the same thing. These come out of a solved database of every position with four pieces or fewer, so "one move holds it" is a fact rather than an opinion — and the page can even tell you how many moves it takes before a wrong one is punished.

How to read the position

Finding the move is not a matter of taste: your answer is checked against a full search of the position, the same search that accepted the puzzle in the first place. Play the wrong move and you are told at once, and the position is handed back so you can try again. There is no answer key to peek at, because there is no answer key — the winning move is recomputed each time you ask for it.

Red sits at the bottom of the board and moves up; black sits at the top and moves down. A disc with a crown is a king and may move in any diagonal direction, one square at a time. Captures are compulsory for both sides, so a move that offers black a jump is not a quiet move — it is a decision. If you are new to any of this, the how to play checkers guide takes ten minutes, and the complete checkers rules settle the finer points.

The task line above the board states how many moves the win takes, counted the way checkers counts them: a double jump is one move, not two. That number is not decoration. It rules out the slow squeeze that also wins eventually, and it tells you how hard to look.

Ready for a real opponent?

Puzzles sharpen the part of checkers that decides games — seeing that a natural-looking move hands over a jump. The rest only shows up against somebody who is trying to beat you. Checkers strategy covers the ideas behind these positions, and the openings cover how games get there.

And once you have solved today's puzzle, the checkers solver will take any position you like — including one from your own game — and tell you the best move, who stands better and what it expects to follow.

Questions about the daily puzzle

What is a checkers puzzle?

A position with one side to move and something that can be forced. Your job is to find the move that works against every defence, not just a move that looks strong. In these puzzles red always moves first and the target is stated up front: red to play and win a piece. The winning move is almost always a shot — you give material away first, black is compelled to take it, and you take back more.

How do I know my answer is right?

The board tells you immediately. Play your move and the position is checked against a full search: if the material you can force is still there, black replies and you continue. If your move lets it slip, the move is taken back and you can try again. Nothing is stored as an answer key, so there is nothing to peek at.

Are these puzzles from real games?

Yes, with one honest qualification: they come from complete games played out by our own engine, not from tournament records. Every position was actually reached in a game rather than placed on an empty board, which is what makes them look like checkers instead of composed studies. They are then filtered hard: exactly one move forces the material, at least one alternative hands material back, and the winning move has to give something up first. Every published position is re-verified by exhaustive search.

Do I need an account to solve the daily puzzle?

No. The puzzle is free and needs no sign-up. Your streak and the puzzles you have solved are stored in your own browser, which also means they stay on the device you played on.

When does the new puzzle appear?

At midnight UTC, so everybody in the world is working on the same position on the same day. Yesterday's puzzles stay available in the archive further down the page.

Which rules do the puzzles use?

American checkers, also called English draughts: men move and capture diagonally forward, kings move one square in any diagonal direction, and captures are compulsory. The Brazilian, international and Turkish variants play by different rules and are available on the main board instead.

More depth: all guides · questions answered · the complete rules