Play International Draughts vs the Computer

Q: How strong is the international draughts AI?

On hard it calculates about ten half-moves ahead on the 10x10 board and never plays a deliberately weak move. On easy it looks two half-moves ahead and weakens roughly one move in three, so a beginner can win. Medium sits between them at three half-moves and one weak move in seven.

A free AI opponent on the 10×10 board · Updated August 20, 2026

You do not need a second player to enjoy the 10×10 game. Checkers Arena includes a free computer opponent that plays the full international rules — backward captures, flying kings and the compulsory maximum capture — on three difficulty levels, right in your browser, with no signup.

▶ Play vs the computer

The three difficulty levels, exactly

Most sites describe their computer opponent with adjectives. Here are the actual settings, because "medium" means nothing on its own. A half-move is one side playing once, so a full move by both players is two of them.

Level	Looks ahead	Plays a deliberately weaker move	Who it is for
Easy	2 half-moves	About 1 move in 3	Learning the flow of the bigger board. It will miss things, on purpose.
Medium	3 half-moves	About 1 move in 7	A solid test once you are comfortable with 20 pieces a side.
Hard	Up to 10 half-moves	Never	A real opponent. It will find the combination you missed.

Easy and medium are capped by their search depth and answer almost instantly. Hard is capped by a time budget instead and uses all of it, reaching around ten half-moves in a typical 10×10 middlegame. The default level is easy, on purpose: winning your first game is the main reason anyone plays a second. Your choice is remembered in your browser, so if you move up you stay there.

How the computer decides on a move

The opponent uses minimax with alpha-beta pruning and iterative deepening over the same rules engine that runs the live board. It searches one half-move deeper, re-orders its candidate moves using what that pass taught it, then goes deeper again until its time runs out. Two refinements do most of the work:

Move ordering. Alpha-beta only pays off when the strongest move is examined first, so the engine remembers which moves caused a cutoff elsewhere in the tree and tries them first — about two thirds fewer positions to examine.
A transposition table. On a board this size the same position is reachable by a great many move orders. The engine hashes each position and remembers its conclusion rather than solving it again — roughly another third on top.

Because the maximum-capture rule forces long combinations, it studies capture sequences especially carefully, and it values kings very highly, reflecting how dominant a flying king is on the open 10×10 board. Every move it plays is generated by the rules engine itself, so an illegal move is not something it is capable of producing.

What the bigger board does to the search

International draughts is the deepest game on this site, and the reason is arithmetic. Forty pieces start on 50 dark squares rather than 24 pieces on 32, men capture in all four directions, and kings sweep whole diagonals — so a typical position offers considerably more legal moves than an 8×8 game does. Every extra option multiplies the number of positions the engine must examine to look one half-move further.

Given the same time budget, the same engine reaches roughly thirteen half-moves in the 8×8 games and about ten here. That is not a weaker opponent, it is a bigger game — but it has a practical consequence worth knowing: deep combinations have more room to hide from it on the 10×10 board. Combinations of six and seven pieces are a real feature of international draughts, and they sit at the edge of what a timed search sees.

A diagram of a long multi-capture sequence on the 10 by 10 international draughts board, with a single piece taking several enemy pieces in one move. — A long capture chain on the 10×10 board — the kind of combination the maximum-capture rule makes compulsory once it exists.

Seven ways to beat it

Count the whole combination. On 10×10 captures chain far — a "free" piece is usually bait for a bigger reply. Follow the sequence to its end, including the recapture.
Watch behind your line. Men capture backwards, so nothing that has passed an enemy piece is safe. This is the most common way material disappears here.
Use the maximum rule as a weapon. The computer does not choose its capture — the longest one is its only legal move. Offer a piece that forces a specific sequence and you have chosen its next move for it.
Fight for the first king. A flying king on an open 10×10 diagonal is decisive far more often than on a small board.
Keep your formation. With twenty pieces, structure matters — isolated men are what combinations are built on, and the computer is good at finding them.
Do not rush to trade when ahead. Simplification is much less reliable here than in American checkers; a single flying king can hold several men.
Take your time in the endgame. With few pieces left, hard searches close to the end of the game and stops making mistakes entirely.

▶ Start a game vs the computer

Practising without an opponent

Playing the computer is one way to improve; checking your own ideas is another. The analysis board lets you set up a position and asks the engine for the best move and why it wins. There is also a daily puzzle and an endgame database holding every position with four pieces or fewer, solved exactly. Both of those tools are American checkers only for now; the computer opponent plays all four variants.

When you would rather face a person, every variant can be played online — an invite link puts a friend on the other side of the board in one click, with no account needed on either side.

Frequently asked questions

Is the international draughts computer opponent free?

Yes. All three difficulty levels are free, with no signup and no download. The opponent runs in your browser rather than on a server, so a game costs nothing and starts instantly.

How strong is the international draughts AI?

On hard it calculates about ten half-moves ahead on the 10×10 board and never plays a deliberately weak move. On easy it looks two half-moves ahead and weakens roughly one move in three, so a beginner can win. Medium sits between them at three half-moves and one weak move in seven.

Why does the computer take longer to think on the 10×10 board?

Because there is far more to look at. Forty pieces on 50 squares, backward captures and flying kings mean many more legal moves per position than an 8×8 game offers, and the number of positions to examine multiplies with every extra half-move of depth. Hard spends its full time budget either way — on the bigger board that budget buys fewer half-moves.

Can the computer cheat at international draughts?

No. The opponent generates its moves with the same rules engine that validates yours, so an illegal move is not something it can produce. It also sees exactly the position you see — draughts has no hidden information to give it.

Is international draughts harder than 8×8 checkers?

Deeper rather than simply harder. The rules are the same as Brazilian draughts, so there is nothing extra to memorise, but the larger board means longer combinations, a slower opening and far more room for a flying king to work. It is the version played at world championship level for exactly that reason.

New to the rules? Read the international draughts rules first, or see the differences page.

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