Filipino Dama

Filipino Dama is played on an 8×8 board. Pieces occupy only the dark squares. Each player starts with 12 pieces — Light at the bottom, Dark at the top.

1. Movement: Regular pieces move one square diagonally forward only. Click a highlighted piece to select it, then click a highlighted square to move.
2. Capturing: Jump over an adjacent enemy piece to capture it — the landing square must be empty. Unlike Western draughts, you can capture in all four diagonal directions (including backward).
3. Mandatory capture: If a capture is available, you must capture. You cannot make a non-capture move when captures are possible.
4. Multi-jump: After a capture, if another capture is available with the same piece, you must continue jumping. Captured pieces are removed only at the end of the chain.
5. Dama (★): Reach the far end of the board to promote to a Dama. A Dama slides any number of squares diagonally and captures long-range in all four directions.
6. Winning: Capture all opponent pieces, or leave them with no legal moves.

Note: Some rules (40-move draw, mid-chain promotion behaviour) are reconstructed — see Cultural Context for details.

Filipino Dama (also called Filipino Draughts) is the traditional checkers variant of the Philippines, where the game has been played for centuries across the archipelago's diverse island communities. The word dama — borrowed from Spanish damas, meaning "draughts" or "ladies" — also names the promoted king piece, a double meaning that is central to the game's strategy.

What sets Filipino Dama apart from its Western counterpart is the capture rule: while standard draughts only allows forward captures for regular pieces, Filipino Dama permits capturing in all four diagonal directions. This makes the game significantly more tactical, as no piece is ever truly "safe" behind a front line.

The Dama piece itself is more powerful than the Western king — rather than moving one square at a time, it slides the full diagonal (like a bishop in chess) and captures long-range by jumping over an enemy anywhere along a diagonal and landing on any empty square beyond. This long-range ability makes Dama promotion a decisive turning point in most games.

Filipino Dama is still played recreationally throughout the Philippines, particularly in provincial towns and barangay plazas, often using improvised boards and bottle caps as pieces. The game is part of a broader Southeast Asian draughts family that includes variants from Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Reconstruction note: The core rules (8×8 board, 12 pieces, all-direction capture, Dama long-range) are well-documented. The 40-move no-capture draw rule and the behaviour of mid-chain promotion (ending the jump chain) follow conventions from the broader international draughts family and are marked as reconstructed.