To the untrained eye, Checkers (or Draughts) might seem like the simpler sibling of Chess. After all, all pieces move diagonally, there are only two types of pieces (men and kings), and captures are mandatory. However, beneath this seemingly simple ruleset lies a game of immense mathematical and strategic complexity.
In game theory, the complexity of a board game is often measured in two ways: state-space complexity (the number of legal board positions) and game-tree complexity (the number of possible games that can be played).
Checkers has roughly 5 x 10^20 possible board positions. While this is significantly smaller than Chess (which sits around 10^43 to 10^50), 500 quintillion is still a mind-bogglingly large number. To put it in perspective, if you could evaluate one million board positions every second, it would still take you over 15 million years to look at every possible checkers board.
The main reason Checkers often feels simpler to beginners is the concept of forced moves. Because capturing is mandatory, a player can often force their opponent into a specific sequence of moves. In Chess, you almost always have multiple responses to an attack, which makes the game feel more open-ended in the short term.
However, this exact mechanic—the forced capture—is what makes high-level Checkers so brutal. A master player can calculate a sequence of sacrifices (giving up their own pieces) that forces the opponent down a narrow path, leading to a devastating multi-jump capture five moves later.
When we built the engine for Next Checkers Move, we utilized algorithms like Minimax with Alpha-Beta pruning—the exact same foundational algorithms used by traditional Chess engines like Stockfish.
The difference lies in the evaluation function. In Chess, material advantage (having more pieces) is usually the strongest indicator of who is winning. In Checkers, positional advantage is often far more important. A single piece safely secured on the edge of the board can sometimes be worth more than two pieces awkwardly positioned in the center where they are vulnerable to forced jumps.
Checkers holds a unique place in computer science history: it was weakly solved by the Chinook project in 2007. The team proved that if both players play perfectly, a game of Checkers will always end in a draw.
Chess, on the other hand, remains unsolved. The sheer size of its state-space makes it impossible for current computers to calculate every possible outcome from the starting position.
While Chess offers a wider variety of piece movements and tactical patterns, Checkers requires a deep, calculated approach to positional play and forcing sequences. Using tools like our Next Checkers Move calculator allows you to peak behind the curtain and see exactly how the AI evaluates these deep, complex positions.