Checkers Opening Moves: The Best First Moves for Beginners

Black has seven possible opening moves in checkers, and in our tests none of them is a mistake. The most popular, written 11‑15 in checkers books (f6 to e5 on Poozee's board), is a fine start, and across 49,000 games between our computer players, every first move kept Black's average score within 3 points of an even game. What matters far more is what comes next: Red's reply swung Black's score by up to 44 points, and 54 of Black's 302 possible second moves give away a man.

Below are all seven first moves with their classic names, how each one did against every reply, and the opening mistakes to avoid, each checked with the game engine behind Poozee's Checkers. If you're new to the game, start with how to play checkers.

The 7 opening moves in checkers

Squares on Poozee are named from Red's side: columns a to h from the left, rows 1 to 8 from the bottom. Black starts on rows 6 to 8 and moves first, and at the start only the four men on its front row can move.

Checkers books number the 32 dark squares instead, from 1 at the upper left to 32 at the lower right, with Black on 1 to 12 and its opponent (White in older books, Red on Poozee) on 21 to 32. A move is written as two numbers. The names below come from P. H. Ketchum's 1923 manual, Checkers: The Handy Manual, which also calls 11‑15 the most popular opening move.

Red's seven replies come from its front row the same way: a3-b4 (21‑17), c3-b4 (22‑17), c3-d4 (22‑18), e3-d4 (23‑18), e3-f4 (23‑19), g3-f4 (24‑19) and g3-h4 (24‑20). That makes 49 two-move openings. Ketchum's manual counts 47 of them as the openings experts study.

How we tested

We had two copies of the Medium computer player from Poozee's Checkers play each other. Medium looks 4 plies ahead (two moves by each side) and picks at random among its best-scoring moves, so games from the same opening differ. Every game was seeded, so each one replays exactly, and a draw counted as half a win for each side.

• From each first move, 2,000 games (14,000 in all), with the computer choosing every move after Black's first, Red's reply included.
• From each of the 49 two-move openings, 1,000 games (49,000 in all), with the computer taking over from Black's second move.

A computer that sees two moves ahead isn't a master. With perfect play, checkers is a draw: it was solved in 2007. So read these numbers as what worked between two players who see a couple of moves ahead, not as the truth about each opening. With 1,000 games from an opening, two scores less than about 4 points apart are too close to call.

Which first move is best?

Black's score with each first move, as a percentage of the points available:

What the numbers say:

• No first move is a mistake. With Red's reply chosen evenly from all seven, every first move scored between 47.9% and 52.5%.
• h6-g5 (12‑16) and d6-c5 (10‑14) did best, in both halves of the games. h6-g5 is also the steadiest first move: no reply held Black under 49%.
• b6-c5 (9‑14) is all or nothing. Black scored 70.7% when Red answered e3-d4, but only 26.6% against g3-f4. It tops the first column only because our Medium computer, playing Red, always answers it with e3-d4.

Ketchum's verdicts come from expert play, which looks much deeper than our Medium computer, and they don't all match. He calls the Denny and the Dundee weak openings for Black, while our computer did best with them. He also calls 9‑13 followed by 22‑18 (b6-a5, c3-d4) the weakest start Black can make, and that one agrees: it was one of Black's two worst lines after b6-a5, at 41.6%.

Good to know: With Red's reply picked evenly, Black averaged 49.7% over all 49 openings. When our Medium computer picked Red's reply, Black scored 56.3% over the 14,000 games. So in our games, Black's edge came mostly from the replies Medium chooses as Red, not from moving first. For the first move itself, at every level and with the colors swapped, see does going first matter in checkers?

Red's side: the replies that matter

Here is every two-move opening, with Red's seven replies to each first move sorted from best to worst for Red. Each number is Black's score from 1,000 games, so as Red, you want it low.

Two of Red's replies are plain mistakes: a3-b4 (21‑17) against b6-c5 or d6-c5. Ketchum calls 21‑17 against the Denny "an obvious loss," and the engine agrees.

Black's only legal move is the jump to a3, and a man on the edge can't be jumped. Searching every line 14 plies deep (seven moves by each side), Red never gets the man back. Of the other 47 replies, 9 also offer Black a man that it must take, but they're fair trades: Red jumps one back right away. Even a fair trade can leave a bad position, though: after b6-c5 and e3-d4, Black scored 70.7% in our games, more than after the free man of a3-b4 (64.5%).

Does the Hard computer agree?

Poozee's Hard computer searches much deeper than Medium. In the game it thinks for 0.8 seconds a move, so how deep it gets depends on your device; for these checks we held it to a fixed depth so the results replay exactly.

• It sees no real difference between the first moves. Looking 12 plies ahead (six moves by each side), Hard's scores for the seven first moves are within 5 points of each other, on a scale where a man is worth 100.
• Its games can't rank openings. At a fixed depth, Hard plays almost the same game every time from the same position: with four different random seeds, its next 13 moves after d6-c5 came out the same. A few hundred of its games would test a single line, not an opening, so we ranked with Medium's more varied games instead.

The most common opening mistake: giving away a man

Most opening disasters aren't deep. We took all 49 two-move positions and checked every second move Black could make, 302 in all, with a search that looks 10 plies ahead (five moves by each side) and follows every jump to the end. 54 of them lose a man, and searching 6 or 8 plies deep finds the same 54. They lose it in three ways:

• 31 move a man where Red can jump it straight away.
• 5 leave a different man open to an immediate jump.
• 18 lose a man to a shot: Red gives up material, and the jumps Black is forced to make cost Black a man, in most cases through a two-for-one.

One man gets lost more than any other: 16 of the 54 losing moves are h6-g5. A man that steps forward leaves an empty square behind it, and an enemy man diagonally in front can jump into that hole.

That one is easy to see. The shot is harder:

Black's only legal move is to jump from e5 over f4 to g3. Then Red's man on h2 jumps twice, over g3 to f4 and over g5 to h6: one man given, two taken.

Most of the 18 opening shots end the same way, with a red double jump landing on h6. Our guide to checkers shots sorts all 18, and shows how to set up a two-for-one yourself and how to see one coming.

Both mistakes cost Black dearly in our games. After f6-e5 and e3-f4, Black scored 48.9% over 1,000 games, but only 24.1% after h6-g5. After f6-e5 and c3-b4 it scored 42.2%, and 31.0% after h6-g5.

Pro tip: Before every move in the opening, look at the square your man is leaving and the squares diagonally in front of where it lands. If an enemy man there could jump into the square you just emptied, find another move.

A simple opening plan for beginners

1. Pick one first move and learn it well. f6-e5 (11‑15) is the classic choice; h6-g5 (12‑16) and d6-c5 (10‑14) did best against our computer.
2. Leave b6-c5 (9‑14) until you know the replies. It's the riskiest first move: Black's score ranged from 26.6% to 70.7% depending on Red's answer.
3. As Red, never answer b6-c5 or d6-c5 with a3-b4. It gives away a man for nothing.
4. Check every second move for a free jump. About one in six of Black's second moves gives away a man, and most of those can be jumped at once.
5. Keep your back row home. It was one of the two habits that mattered most in our checkers strategy tests, and it keeps your opponent from crowning a king.

On Poozee, the Hint button shows the move the Hard computer would play, which is a quick way to check an opening move before you commit to it.

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