Turkish draughts or Dama, is a variant of a the board game Draughts in turkey, Greece and a lot of Arabic countries like Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan.
Turkish draughts gameplay
Turkish draughts is played on an 8×8 checkers board of 64 dark and white squares, with 32 pieces, 16 for each player. White pieces are placed in the rows 2 and 3. Black pieces placed in the rows 6 and 7. The player with white pieces begins the game.
Not like other checkers variants, the player do not capture or move his pieces diagonally, if adjacent squares are empty, he must move them to the right, left and forward, but cannot go back. The goal of all pieces is to reach the most advanced squares of the last row of the board and become “Kings”.
The piece, which does this and becomes king, gains gains the strength and ability to move back, and can move in L. The king have also the ability to captures a piece even if it is some number of unoccupied squares away, and chooses, in the same path wich empty square to land on after a jump (or multi-jump). After being jumped, the captured pieces must be removed from the checkers board.
The goal of Turkish draughts is to capture all the opponents pieces to win the game. If both players have a piece at the end of the game, the game ends as a draw.
Turkish draughts rules
Moves and captures
- When a piece is touched by a player, it must be played.
- When an opponent piece is eligible, it must be jumped (captures are mandatory)
- If you have more than one option to make a jump, you have to choose the one that makes you take the maximum number of opponent pieces.
- When capturing, the value of the piece doesn’t matter, they are all considered pieces after all.
- When making a multi-jump, you can go forward, turn left or right, but not turn 180 degrees.
- When a simple piece reaches the last row and is promoted to a king, it can continue its move if it has a possible capture.
Draws
- The game ends in a draw when both players have one piece left.
- The game is considered as a draw if one player propose it and the other player accepts the offer.
- The game is considered as a draw if the same position is repeated three times in the same way by one of the players.