Turkish vs Other Draughts Variants

The differences, side by side · Updated August 20, 2026

Turkish draughts is the odd one out — the only major variant that is orthogonal rather than diagonal, played on all 64 squares instead of just the dark ones. Here is how it compares to American checkers and the diagonal draughts variants.

Not a variant of checkers — a separate branch

It is tempting to read Turkish draughts as checkers with the rules bent, and that framing gets the relationship backwards. Both games descend from alquerque, a much older capture-by-jumping game played across the Mediterranean world, and the family split early along a single question: which way do pieces travel?

Western Europe took the diagonal answer and produced American checkers, Brazilian and international draughts. The eastern Mediterranean kept the straight-line answer, and that is Turkish draughts. Neither is a modification of the other — they are cousins, and the reason nothing transfers between them is ancestry rather than difficulty.

The rules side by side

Turkish vs the diagonal variants

The headline difference is direction. American checkers, Brazilian and international draughts are all diagonal games played on the dark squares — a piece on a dark square stays on dark squares forever. Turkish draughts is orthogonal: pieces move up, down, left and right across every square. That changes almost everything about how the game feels — men advance in straight files, kings behave like rooks rather than bishops, and captures turn crisp right angles instead of zig-zagging along diagonals.

How the men behave

In the diagonal variants a man threatens two squares ahead of it; in Turkish a man threatens the square directly in front and the squares to each side. Men cannot move or capture backward in Turkish (unlike Brazilian and international men, which capture backward). The sideways move is unique to Turkish and gives its formations a very different texture.

It also means a Turkish man is almost never stuck. A blocked checkers piece has nowhere to go; a Turkish man with an enemy in front of it can still step aside. Blocking someone completely — which is a genuine way to win in every variant — therefore takes more work here, and tends to happen at the board edges where the sideways escape runs out.

How the kings behave

Both families promote a man that ends its move on the far row, but the piece you get is not comparable. An American king moves one square diagonally. A Brazilian or international king flies along a diagonal. A Turkish king moves like a rook in chess — any distance along a rank or a file, capturing at range and landing on any free square beyond its victim.

Because the Turkish board has no unusable squares, there is nowhere to stand that a rook-like king cannot eventually reach. On a diagonal board a piece on a light square is permanently invisible to everything on the dark squares; here, every piece is on every king's map. That is why the race to promote decides more Turkish games than it does checkers games.

What changes when you actually play

Three practical things surprise players arriving from a diagonal game:

• Threats come from three sides, not two. A piece beside yours is attacking it just as surely as a piece in front. This is where most material is lost in the first few games.
• Captures turn corners. A sequence can run forward, then sideways, then forward again, so a "free" piece is often the first link in something much longer. Counting to the end of the chain matters more here than anywhere else.
• The board is twice as busy. Sixteen pieces a side on 64 usable squares, against twelve on 32 — there is more material and more room, and correspondingly more to check every move. Even our engine searches less deep in Turkish draughts than in any other variant for exactly this reason (see playing the computer).

Which should you play?

• Want the classic diagonal game? Start with American checkers.
• Want diagonal with more depth? Try Brazilian or international draughts.
• Want something genuinely different? Turkish draughts is the orthogonal game — worth playing precisely because it breaks all your diagonal habits.

One honest note if you are considering the jump: Turkish draughts is not harder to learn than the diagonal games. Its rulebook is shorter than Brazilian draughts' — men move in three directions, there is no backward capture to remember, and promotion works the same way. What makes the first few games disorienting is purely that your pattern recognition is calibrated for diagonals. That wears off in an evening, and what is left is a genuinely different game rather than a novelty.

All four are playable here free and without an account — American checkers, Brazilian, international and Turkish draughts — and the tabs above the board switch between them in one click, so comparing them costs nothing.

Read the full Turkish draughts rules, the history, or the FAQ.