Play Checkers Online

There are dozens of places to play checkers online, both against human opponents and against artificial intelligence opponents. While the audience is moving to mobile apps, you may still want to play using your desktop or laptop computer. For those looking for places to play the board game checkers online, here are some favorite sites.

Checkers at ItsYourTurn.com

In addition to American Checkers (British Draughts), ItsYourTurn.com offers numerous variants, including Pro Checkers, Anti-Checkers, Sparse Checkers, Crowded Checkers, and Mule Checkers. This is a turn-based website. When you start a game, a game board will appear and you will be Red. You can make your first move at that time or wait. Your game is placed in their Waiting Room for an opponent to pick up the game with you. There are house rules that 50 moves without a capture or kinging is a draw and exact board position occurring three times in a game is a draw.

Pogo.com Checkers

Pogo.com also tends to have a good number of potential opponents, although it only offers American Checkers for online play. You can play as a guest and only play computer opponents. If you want to play against people, you have to complete the free registration. The features offered by Pogo.com include multiplayer games, choice of themes, bonus jumps when you make multiple jumps in a turn or capture an opponent's king, and chatting with other players.

Yahoo! Games Checkers - Discontinued

Yahoo! Games formerly offered live checker rooms where you played other real opponents. However, this feature was discontinued in 2014 for technological reasons to improve the security and stability of the website. All Yahoo games were discontinued in early 2016. The online game market had passed on to mobile apps and the niche was declining.

There are fewer online checkers games than there were in years past. This is due to two issues. First, the games were designed using coding that was not secure or supported by a variety of different computers. As online sites upgraded to more secure formats, they had to either drop the games or have them recorded.

Another factor is the rise of mobile apps. Whereas before you might sit in front of your computer at home or at work and while away some time playing a game, more and more people began using tablets, phones, and apps for those diversions. As the audience moved to new platforms, online sites shut down.