How to Play Draughts Give and Take

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

Draughts Give and Take is a two-player strategy game played on a standard 8x8 draughts board. It combines the forced-capture rule of orthodox draughts with an asymmetric winning condition: one player wins by capturing all opposing pieces, while the other wins by giving all their own pieces away. The result is a game of genuine tactical tension where every forced capture can be as dangerous as it is useful.

Players love it because it rewards lateral thinking rather than rote pattern learning. A position that looks winning can flip entirely if you fail to spot that your opponent is engineering your captures on purpose. It is played at home, in clubs, and at informal tournaments wherever standard draughts is popular.

A little history

Give and Take is a compound variant that blends orthodox draughts with Losing Draughts (also called Giveaway or Suicide Draughts), a format with documented roots in European draughts literature going back at least to the nineteenth century. The exact origin of combining the two objectives into a single asymmetric game is unclear; it appears in various recreational puzzle and games collections from the twentieth century but has no single identifiable inventor or first publication on record.

Setting up

1. Place the board so that each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner.
2. Dark pieces occupy the 12 squares on the three rows nearest the player with dark pieces.
3. Light pieces occupy the 12 squares on the three rows nearest the player with light pieces.
4. All pieces are placed on dark squares only.
5. Before play begins, agree and announce which role each player takes: the Taker (wins by capturing all opponent pieces) or the Giver (wins by losing all their own pieces). One player takes each role.
6. The player controlling dark pieces moves first.

How to play

1. Players alternate turns. On each turn a player must move exactly one piece.
2. Ordinary pieces move diagonally forward one square to an adjacent unoccupied dark square.
3. Capturing: if an opponent's piece sits on a diagonal square adjacent to yours, and the square immediately beyond it is empty, you must jump over it, removing the captured piece from the board.
4. Capturing is compulsory. If any capture is available on your turn, you must make it. You may not make a non-capturing move instead.
5. If multiple captures are available, you may choose which one to take. There is no obligation to take the maximum number of pieces in a single turn (unless house rules specify otherwise; see Fine Points).
6. Chain captures: after landing from a capture, if a further capture is immediately available with the same piece, you must continue jumping in the same turn until no further capture is possible.
7. Promotion: when an ordinary piece reaches the far row of the board (the opponent's back rank), it is crowned a King by placing a second piece on top of it. A King may move and capture diagonally in any direction, both forward and backward.
8. A piece that reaches the back rank mid-jump and becomes eligible for promotion stops there and is crowned immediately; it does not continue jumping in that turn.
9. The Taker wins by capturing every one of the Giver's pieces.
10. The Giver wins by losing every one of their own pieces (having all of them captured by the Taker), or by reaching a position where they have no legal move on their turn.
11. If the Giver has no legal move but still has pieces on the board, the Giver wins, because being completely blocked counts as having no pieces left to move.
12. If a position is repeated three times with the same player to move, the game is declared a draw.

Winning and scoring

The Taker wins by removing every one of the Giver's pieces from the board through captures. The Giver wins by engineering a position in which all of their own pieces have been captured by the Taker, or in which they have no legal move available on their turn. There is no points scoring system: each game produces one winner. A draw is declared only if the same board position with the same player to move is repeated three times.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns the maximum-capture rule. Standard draughts rules in many national codes require a player to choose the capture sequence that takes the greatest number of opponent pieces. In Give and Take this rule is sometimes omitted by agreement because the Giver may deliberately present multi-piece capture sequences as a trap. Agree before the game begins whether maximum capture is compelled. If you play without it, any available capture satisfies the compulsory-capture requirement, and the player may choose freely which jump to take.

A second dispute arises when a piece reaches the back rank mid-sequence. The widely accepted ruling, consistent with most draughts codes, is that promotion ends the turn immediately: the piece is crowned and the chain capture does not continue. However, some informal traditions allow the newly crowned King to continue capturing in the same turn if further captures are available. Again, settle this before play begins. When the Giver has pieces that cannot move but are not all captured, this counts as no legal move available and the Giver wins immediately.

How to win more often

• As the Taker, try to maintain a solid advancing formation rather than rushing single pieces forward. Isolated pieces are easy for the Giver to sacrifice themselves onto.
• As the Giver, engineer forced capture sequences. Position two or three pieces so that capturing one obliges the Taker to take the next, clearing your side of the board faster than you could manage in open play.
• Kings are double-edged for the Giver: a King can manoeuvre to offer itself for capture from a distance, which is often more useful than any ordinary piece can manage.
• The Taker should avoid creating long diagonal corridors where the Giver's pieces can offer themselves in chains. Break up lines and try to reduce the Giver's options to single, low-value captures.
• Both players should think two moves ahead about who benefits from each capture. A capture that looks strong for the Taker may be exactly what the Giver has set up.

Variations

Switched Roles at Halftime

Players swap roles halfway through a match, once a set number of pieces have been removed or after a fixed time. The match score is carried over and the player who wins in both roles, or accumulates the most wins across two games, takes the match. This format reduces the luck of being assigned the easier role on a given board position.

Both Players as Givers

Both players simultaneously attempt to lose all their pieces, while captures remain compulsory. This turns the game into a race to engineer your own elimination. The first player to clear their pieces entirely wins. This version plays faster and is particularly accessible to younger players.

Maximum Capture Enforced

A stricter version in which the compulsory-capture rule is extended: a player must always choose the available move or sequence that captures the most opponent pieces. This changes the Giver's strategy considerably, since multi-piece offerings become far more predictably exploitable, and the Taker must plan carefully to avoid being forced into captures that accelerate the Giver's win.

10x10 Board

Played on an international 10x10 draughts board with 20 pieces per side. All other rules remain the same. The larger board significantly increases the complexity for both players, extends average game length, and makes the Giver's task of engineering full clearance considerably harder without careful long-range King manoeuvres.

Draughts Give and Take: frequently asked questions