Draughts is the classic two-player strategy game of diagonal moves and daring jumps: simple enough for a five-year-old to learn in one sitting, deep enough that adults are still arguing about it centuries later.
Draughts at a glance
Players: 2 · Ages: 5+ · Time: 15-30 minutes · You need: an 8x8 chequered board and 12 pieces each
Capture all of your opponent's pieces, or trap them so they cannot move. 1. Set your 12 pieces on the dark squares of your first three rows. 2. Take turns moving one piece diagonally forward, one square at a time. 3. Jump over an enemy piece into the empty square beyond to capture it, and keep jumping if you can. 4. Reach the far row and your piece is crowned a king, which moves and captures backwards as well as forwards. 5. The player with no pieces left, or no legal move, loses.
Place the board so each player has a dark square in the left-hand corner nearest them. Each player takes 12 pieces and arranges them on the dark squares of the three rows closest to them. The light squares are never used: the whole game lives on the diagonals. The darker pieces move first, and players alternate one move at a time from there.
An ordinary piece, called a man, moves one square diagonally forward onto an empty dark square. Forward means towards your opponent. Men never move backwards or sideways. That is the whole movement rule, which is why a young child can be playing a genuine game within five minutes of opening the box.
Captures are where draughts comes alive. If an enemy piece sits diagonally in front of one of yours with an empty square immediately beyond it, you jump over it, land on the empty square, and remove the captured piece. And here is the rule that turns a polite stroll into a proper game:
Under the old traditional rule, a player who missed a compulsory capture could be "huffed": the opponent removed the offending piece as a penalty. Modern play has retired huffing; the player simply takes the move back and makes the capture. Many families relax the rule altogether and make captures optional for young children. That is an honourable house rule for the first dozen games, but do graduate to compulsory captures, because forced jumps are where the real strategy, the sacrifices and the traps, begins.
March a man all the way to the far row and it is crowned a king: your opponent hands back one of your captured pieces and you stack it on top. A king moves and captures one square diagonally in any direction, backwards as well as forwards, which makes it roughly twice the piece a man is. One important ruling: reaching the back row ends your turn, even if a jump seems available. A new king begins its reign on your next move.
You win by capturing all of your opponent's pieces, or by leaving them with no legal move on their turn. If neither player can make progress, both reduced to a king or two chasing each other around the diagonals, the game is a draw, and the only honourable response is a rematch.
Draughts is one of the oldest board games in continuous play anywhere in the world. Its ancestors trace back to the ancient world, and the modern game, the 8x8 board, 12 men a side, kings and forced jumps, settled into its familiar shape in Europe centuries ago. Children learning draughts today are playing recognisably the same game their great-great-grandparents played, a claim very few entertainments can make.
Jaques of London, the world's oldest games company, has made draughts sets through the whole of its history. A game this old does not survive on nostalgia. It survives because the design is close to perfect: one piece, one move, one capture, and an ocean of strategy underneath.
For most children, draughts is the first true strategy game: the first where the result depends not on a dice roll or a lucky card but entirely on the choices made at the table. That is a developmental milestone hiding in plain sight.
Because captures are forced, draughts teaches a child to plan two moves ahead almost from the first game. "If I move here, they must jump me, and then I can jump them back" is genuine if-then reasoning, the forward planning that researchers in executive function prize, dressed up as a trap for Grandad. Every move has visible consequences, so children learn quickly that choices matter and a careless move cannot be unmade. Add turn-taking, the fine motor work of jumping a piece cleanly along the diagonals, and regular low-stakes practice at losing and resetting the board, and you have a complete piece of equipment for growing a thinker. There is a reason it has long been called the gateway to chess: a child fluent in draughts has already learned diagonals, captures, planning and patience. If your child is just starting out, our guide to first board games covers what to play before and alongside it.
Five is the honest starting age for real draughts, but a keen four-year-old can join in with a little scaffolding:
And if the game collapses into stacking the pieces into towers, let it. Board familiarity is never wasted at this age.
All you need is a chequered 8x8 board and 24 pieces, but there is a quiet pleasure in good ones: solid wooden men that stack into satisfyingly chunky kings, on a board that lasts long enough to teach the next generation. Jaques has made them for as long as the company has existed.
See the Jaques draughts and board games collection →Yes. In the standard game, captures are compulsory: if a jump is available, you must take one, though where several are possible you may choose which. Many families make captures optional for young beginners, which is fine as a starter rule, but the compulsory version is the real game and the source of most of its strategy.
Yes. A king is captured exactly like an ordinary man: jump over it into the empty square beyond and it leaves the board, crown and all. Stronger, not safer.
The game is a draw. This usually happens late on, when each side has a king or two and neither can force a capture. If the same position keeps repeating, call it honours even and set the board up again. But if one player cannot move at all on their turn, that is not a draw: a blocked player loses.
Most children can learn the moves at five and play a genuine, competitive game by six or seven. Four-year-olds can manage a simplified version with optional captures and fewer pieces. As first strategy games go, it is hard to beat: faster than chess, fairer than dice, and playable across any gap in age.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.