How to Play Lattice
For fans of classic Checkers and Draughts, Lattice is free online and plays in your browser with no download. Lattice is single-player checkers — American draughts rules — played on a standard 8x8 board rendered inside a glowing fractal backdrop of recursive diagonal lines. Your twelve teal pieces start on the dark squares of the bottom three rows; the AI's twelve magenta pieces mirror them across the top. On your turn, slide any man one square diagonally forward. If an adjacent enemy piece sits with an empty square behind it, you jump over it to capture — and captures are mandatory. If multiple jumps are available, you pick which piece to start with, but the chain itself runs to completion: the same piece keeps jumping as long as another capture exists. Reach the opposite back rank and your man is crowned a king, gaining the right to move and capture diagonally in any direction. You win by removing every enemy piece from the board, or by leaving the AI with no legal move.
Strategy Tips
- Control the middle four columns early. Centre pieces command more diagonals and threaten more squares than edge pieces, which can only attack in one direction. Edge pieces are defensive walls, not attackers.
- Advance as a phalanx, not a lone wolf. A single pushed piece is a free capture. Move pieces forward in mutually-supporting pairs so any jump the AI takes exposes it to an immediate recapture.
- Trade when ahead, complicate when behind. If you're up a piece, every even exchange brings you closer to a forced win. If you're down material, avoid trades and try to fork — create a threat the AI can only answer by losing a piece back.
- Race for king promotion. One king changes the board: it can retreat, re-engage, and chain long multi-jumps in any direction. Sacrificing a man to push a runner onto the back rank is often worth it.
- Play tempo against the minimax AI. The search looks a fixed number of plies ahead, so a move that forces a reply is worth more than a quiet development move. Don't waste turns shuffling back-rank pieces.
What Makes Lattice Different
Lattice is classic American checkers with a visual and algorithmic twist. The "fractal" in the name refers to the recursive diagonal lattice that drifts behind the board — a self-similar neon backdrop that echoes the diagonal movement of the pieces themselves, not a literal multi-layer or nested board. The gameplay is pure 8x8 draughts: forced captures, mandatory multi-jump chains, king promotion on the back rank. What sets it apart from most free browser checkers is the AI. Lattice ships a real minimax search with alpha-beta pruning across three difficulty tiers — Novice, Strategist, and Grandmaster — each with distinct search depth and evaluation weight. Unlike Go, which is territorial, or chess, which has seven piece types and castling, checkers rewards tight diagonal geometry and forced-sequence reading. No ads, no sign-up, no accounts — just open and play.
A Short History of Checkers
Checkers is one of the oldest board games humans still play. An ancestor called Alquerque was played in Egypt as early as 3000 BCE; the modern diagonal-movement version emerged in 12th-century southern France, where players adapted Alquerque pieces onto a chessboard. For most of the 20th century, world champion Marion Tinsley was considered unbeatable. Between 1989 and 1994, a program developed at the University of Alberta became the first computer to win a human-vs-machine world championship in any game. In 2007 the same research group announced that checkers had been weakly solved — under perfect play by both sides, the game is a draw.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "fractal checkers" actually mean in Lattice?
The board and rules are standard 8x8 American checkers — no nested sub-boards, no recursive captures, no multi-layer stack. The "fractal" label refers to the animated backdrop: two repeating diagonal gradients drift across each other at 45 and -45 degrees, creating a self-similar lattice pattern that scales consistently at any zoom level. The theme carries into the UI (neon teal and magenta, glowing pieces) but the game underneath is pure draughts. If you can play checkers, you can play Lattice.
What are the three difficulty levels and which should I pick?
Novice searches two plies with random tie-breaking — good for learning how pieces move, but it will blunder. Strategist searches four plies with a full positional evaluation and is the intended training difficulty; it plays a solid mid-game and punishes obvious mistakes. Grandmaster searches six plies with iterative deepening under a wall-clock cap, evaluating material, king bonuses, centre control, and mobility. Most casual players should start on Strategist — Novice is too random to teach real patterns, and Grandmaster will feel unforgiving until you've practiced.
How does the AI in Lattice decide its moves?
Lattice uses a classic minimax search with alpha-beta pruning. On Novice the AI searches 2 plies deep with random tie-breaking noise — good enough to make legal moves but easy to outplay. On Strategist it searches 4 plies and plays a solid mid-game. On Grandmaster it searches 6 plies with a 400ms wall-clock cap, evaluating piece material, king bonuses, centre control, and mobility. Captures are always mandatory for the AI, just like for the human player.
Can I play Lattice against a friend locally?
Not in the current build. Lattice is single-player versus the minimax AI. There is no pass-and-play or online multiplayer mode. If you want a two-human game you'll need a physical board — but the AI gives you a predictable, scalable opponent any time of day, which most casual players prefer over finding a friend with matching schedules.
Does Lattice work on mobile phones and tablets?
Yes. The 8x8 board rescales to fit narrow screens, tap targets are sized for touch, and the fractal backdrop animation respects the prefers-reduced-motion accessibility setting. There is no app install — Lattice runs in any modern mobile browser. Multi-jump chains animate one segment at a time so you can follow the sequence on a small display.
Are multi-jumps and forced captures required in Lattice?
Yes. Lattice plays by American checkers rules — if any of your pieces can capture, you must capture. The board highlights only the pieces that can start a capture sequence, and after a jump the same piece must continue jumping if another capture is still available. Multi-jumps chain automatically, animating one segment at a time, and you cannot stop a chain partway through. This rule applies equally to the AI.
Is there a leaderboard, and how is my score calculated?
Yes — each difficulty has its own separate leaderboard, so Novice clears don't compete with Grandmaster runs. Your score combines pieces remaining on the board, kings you crowned during the game, opponent pieces you captured, and a win bonus if you defeat the AI. Dominant wins against higher difficulty earn more points overall.
