TL;DR: American/English draughts: 8×8, 12 a side, men jump forward, kings walk one square any diagonal, must-capture common, no flying. International draughts (10×10, 20 a side) uses flying kings, majority capture, and a different force culture. Playing one with the other’s muscle memory is how kings “teleport” and then snap back. Read the lobby chip. The chip is the country. The country is the rules.
Board size is not a skin
10×10 is not 8×8 with more wallpaper. Extra rows change king distance, opening crowding, and how long a man lives before crowning. If you queued 8×8 and got 10×10, you are in a different sport that shares a family name. Family names are how people get angry at “broken flying.” Flying is not broken. It is international. International is a word on the chip. Read.
Piece count 20 vs 12 is the same lesson. Crowding means more forced sequences early. Your American quiet-develop default may be illegal because a capture exists in a bigger crowd. Crowds are a ruleset, not a rating of the opponent.
Kings: walk versus fly
Walk: one dark square per move, captures adjacent. Fly: travel any distance along a diagonal if empty, capture by jumping a piece with a landing beyond, sometimes continuing. If you try to fly a walk-king, the UI snaps. Snap is the ruleset. If you try to walk when you could fly, you leave a win on the table. Table is international. Know which table.
On this site’s typical 8×8, assume walk unless the chip says otherwise. Assuming fly is the most expensive import. Imports should be declared at customs. Customs is the lobby. Declare.
Capture force: any vs majority
American casual: you must capture, but if two captures exist you often may choose, even if one takes fewer pieces. International: majority capture can force the sequence that takes more. “I wanted the other jump” is illegal there. Illegal is not a bug. It is majority. Majority is why their king flew a long line you did not calculate. Calculate quantity of takes, not prettiness, if the chip says majority.
Huffing (removing a piece that failed to capture) is old-table folklore. Most online servers do not huff; they refuse the quiet move instead. If you wait for a huff, you will wait forever and flag. Forever is not a ruleset. Refusal is. Click the jump.
First move and colors
Who starts differs by tradition and by site. Do not bring chess-white-first into a red-first room. The banner is law. Law is the clock ticking. If you premove as second, you may be fine or you may steal your own first thought. First thoughts should wait for the banner. Banners are cheaper than folklore.
Notation 1–32 vs algebraic vs 10×10 numbering: do not paste an 8×8 book move onto a 10×10 board. Books are sized. Size is a ruleset. Wrong-size books are how “the opening is refuted” when you played on the wrong planet. Planets are chips. Stay on one planet per game. Per account, you may visit both. Visiting both requires a ritual: read the chip every queue. Every. Rituals are cheaper than one flying-king disaster a night.
Draw rules also differ
Repetition, 40-move, shuttle in the double corner: packages differ. International has its own draw codes. Do not claim a draw in chat because an American article said 40. Chat is not a TD. The engine will draw when its package says so, or you will offer. Offers are universal. Packages are not. If you need a draw, offer. If they need it, they offer. If nobody offers, play until the package triggers. Trigger is a counter you cannot see unless the UI shows it. If it does not show it, you are playing until someone flags or jumps the last man. Last man is a ruleset ending too. Endings are later articles. This one is: do not mix packages.
Club night: say “American 8×8 walk-kings must-capture” or “international 10×10” before clocks start. Before. After is a lawsuit in a kitchen. Kitchens deserve the chip spoken aloud. Aloud is accessibility. Accessibility is another page. This page is the two sports. Two. Not one with a slider. Sliders are CSS. CSS is not 10×10. 10×10 is ten. Count the squares if the chip is tiny. Tiny chips are a UX bug. Counting is the workaround. Workarounds are legal. Mixing sports is not. Do not mix. Play. Jump. Walk or fly on purpose. Purpose is the chip. The chip is the article. Read it every time you press play, even if you pressed play 247 times. Especially then. Habit is how flying sneaks in. Sneaking is the import. Customs. Again. Always again.
Crowning: does the turn end on the back rank
On many American 8 by 8 rulesets, a man that reaches the last rank becomes a king and the turn stops, even if that new king could capture from the promotion square. International 10 by 10 often lets a flying king continue in the same turn when the promotion happened by capture along a long diagonal. If you learned the stop-on-crowning habit, you will hesitate on a 10 by 10 board and hand the opponent a tempo. If you learned the continue habit, you will try to slide a brand-new American king and the client will snap the piece back. Neither habit is a bug. Read the chip before the first king appears, not after the chat argument. A practical check: in a casual game against a friend, say out loud “promotion ends the turn” or “promotion can keep capturing” before the first move. Kitchens get quieter when that sentence is spoken early.
The eighth rank on an 8 by 8 board is not the tenth rank on a 10 by 10 board. A line copied from the other sport promotes into empty air.
Which way the double corner sits
American boards are usually placed so the double corner is at the player’s lower left, on dark squares, and men move forward on the dark. Sit down at a kitchen table where someone set the board like chess, light square in the right-hand corner, and every “forward” you memorized is sideways. Online clients hide this by forcing orientation. A physical set will not. Before you borrow an international diagram, check board size and which corner is nearest your right hand. Replay on the board the chip named. An 8 by 8 kitchen set practices American geometry even if the video was international. That is not a warm-up for flying kings.
