Checkers and draughts online
One board, seven rule sets, and an opponent whenever you want one - a rated game over the network, or the computer with the network switched off entirely.
Browser version - coming soonKondavo is almost ready. The browser version will open in this tab, with no download and nothing to fill in before the first move.
Seven rule sets, and they really are different games
Most checkers apps ship one set of rules and call the rest variants. These seven are implemented separately, down to which square is playable and what a king is allowed to do, because a Turkish player and an English player are not playing the same game with a house rule between them.
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English checkers
8×8, three rows each. Men move and capture forwards only, and a king steps one square at a time. The version most of the English-speaking world learned as a child.
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International draughts
10×10, four rows each. Men capture in every direction, kings slide the length of a diagonal, and you must take the line that captures the most pieces.
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Turkish draughts
8×8 on every square, sixteen men a side, no diagonals at all. Pieces move and capture straight ahead and sideways, and captured men come off the board immediately.
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Spanish checkers
8×8 with long-range kings but forward-only men, and a tie-break that decides between two captures of equal length by counting the kings taken.
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Brazilian draughts
The international rules on the small board: capture in every direction, flying kings, maximum capture compulsory. Faster and sharper than the 10×10 game.
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Ukrainian draughts
8×8, also known as shashki. Men capture backwards too and kings fly, but you may take any capture you like, and a man that reaches the last row in the middle of a capture carries on as a king.
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Italian draughts
8×8 with forward-only men and a king that steps one square. A man may never capture a king, and when two captures are the same length, the king must be the one that takes.
In the browser, on the phone, or on a plane
The browser version, coming soon, is the whole game, not a demo: the same seven rule sets, the same opponents, the same ratings. It will open on a laptop at work and on a phone in a queue, and the game you leave on one of them will be waiting on the other.
Offline, the computer plays at a range of strengths - from an opponent that lets a beginner finish a game to one that punishes a loose move ten plies later. It runs on the device, so it works on a plane, on a train, and in the parts of the world where mobile data is something you ration.
Two people with one phone can share it: pass-and-play on a single board, no second account and no second device.
Every rule set has its own rating
Online games are paired by rule set and rating, so your opponent plays roughly as well as you do. Each rule set carries its own rating: being strong at English checkers says nothing about your Turkish, and the leaderboards agree.
The clock belongs to the server
Timed online games run on a clock the server keeps, not one your phone keeps. That is a boring engineering detail with one visible consequence: nobody wins because their opponent's connection stuttered, and nobody gains a second by changing a device's system time.
If your connection drops mid-game, the game is still there when you come back.
A puzzle a day, and over 1,000 more
Every day brings a new daily puzzle, the same one for every player, and a streak of days to keep. A widget on your phone's home screen shows the streak and whether today's puzzle is still waiting.
Beyond that, the app holds over 1,000 puzzles in stages, easiest first. Five a day are free; with the Premium subscription there is no limit.
Puzzle rush: three minutes and three lives - how many puzzles can you solve? Each one is a little harder than the last, and the best scores of the day, the week and all time go on the list.
Puzzle race: send a friend a link - you both get the same puzzles and 90 seconds each, and whoever solves more wins. You don't have to play at the same time.
Your games leave with you
Any finished game exports as PDN, the plain-text notation the draughts world already uses, and the app reads back files it did not write. Your openings are not locked inside somebody else's database - including ours.
You can also set up a position yourself - men and kings wherever you like - and play the computer from there.
Ten languages
English (US and UK), Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Rule names differ by country for real historical reasons, and the interface uses the name each country actually uses.
Where things stand
The browser version is coming soon. The Android and iOS builds are finished software in their last stretch before a first release on Google Play and the App Store; there is no store listing to link to yet, and when there is, it will be here.