Capture rule of checkers

Hello,

I’ve played several games yesterday with the AI and I’m surprised that it doesn’t always capture when possible. I though it was mandatory?

Maybe I’m wrong for checkers. We play a different flavor in my country (jeu de dames: capture backward with regular pieces, move several cases with a Queen, 10x10 cases board and 4 rows of pieces per side…)

Thanks for your advice!

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So yes it is a rule that you must jump in tournament checkers.

We put a lot of thought into whether forcing jumps or not. When we researched it - most casual players do not enforce jumps. So we left it out.

Note- once a jump is started, the multi-jumps must complete.

I am curious - what did you think about the experience? And how tough was the Ai?

It was actually nice to play with it but the fact that it doesn’t always jump when possible remove the power of some strategic move.

It would be great if we had the choice between starting a ‘casual’ game or an ‘official’ game with this rule enforced.

Remote play through the app would be great too.

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I learned to play checkers (it is called ‘dammen’ in The Netherlands) with quite some different rules than this ChessUp version of checkers. Not only was it mandatory to capture when possible, but also normal pieces could capture moving back. Both are not implemented in this version, making it a totally different experience and a more simple version of the game.

The way I learned to play was you could capture when you wanted to not that you had too. Also I’ve always played you can’t move backwards unless you piece is “Kinged/Queened”. Looking forward to purchasing the checkers pieces for my younger cousins to play around with, they love the lights on the board.

Hi Jeff,
after receiving my pieces I played a few games against the AI. Fun, easy and bugfree :wink:
I am really a casual checkers player (used to european rules and mandatory captures), but I wan against level 6 IA after a couple games… and I lost aferward. I would say the level of the AI is quite low ( but a perfect match for me!).
I know the team i sdedicated to chess lessons right now, but could we dream of a few improvements for checkers? Such as:
. the option to choose the tournament mandatory capture rule for a game
. the ability to save checkers games in the App
. a stronger AI trough the App

Keep the good job!
Laurent

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… and the clock in the App for checkers!

Cheers,
Laurent

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!

We should be able to get the forced capture rule in place in the future. I think in 2025 unfortunately, but we will get to it at some point.

Saving checkers games is something for us to consider. It would be cool, just depends when the app team has space. I am not sure we can commit to it, but we can put it on the list.

Stronger Ai should actually be pretty easy for checkers. We made it pretty easy just to start. We are overhauling the Chess Ai right now and we can take some lessons from that to apply to checkers.

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Great news. It would be really awesome to benefit from all the work done for chess. What makes your product unique, in my opinion, is the assistance with the color system: opponents with different strength can play together; it’s a very elegant way of introducing handicaps like in asian games (go, shogi). So, if you link the checker’s engine with the App, we can dream of the perfect checkers e-board (with forced capture of course, a prerequisite for more serious play…). Personally, i’m using the chess board a lot with limited help set to 1 touch.

Hi,

Is there any update coming for chess up 1 users? I saw that the force capture has been implemented for chess up 2.

I’m also wondering if chess up 1 checkers pieces are compatible with the new chess up 2 board.

I initially ordered two sets of checkers pieces for backgammon but I doubt it arrives anytime soon. If compatible I can maybe keep 1 set and consider upgrading to chess up 2 while selling the other set with the original board.

Regards,

Alexandre.

Hi

The checker pieces for ChessUp 1 and ChessUp 2 are the same. Both have no piece recognition. I use my checker pieces I bought for ChessUp 1 on my ChessUp 2.

yes please… don’t forget V1 users. Force capture would be great please.
best regards,
Laurent

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The code for force capture on ChessUp 1 is easy - but we are not sure how to make the ChessUp 1 UI (which is just one button) toggle between forced capture and no forced capture.

We could perhaps have the AI level selector have two modes (rolls over to a new color and that is forced capture) - but are not sure if that will be too confusing.

The best solution is to provide a link with the phone App and then allow a choice of rule in the App. But a change of color is also good: without the force capture rule the only thing my checkers pieces capture is dust…

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Yeah let’s do the app setting - we can put that on the to-do

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As I said a year ago…. Selling Checkers without forced capture is like selling the chessboard without allowing for en passant.

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