Keckers was invented in 1986 and documented in 1987 in the booklet The Official Illustrated Keckers Rulebook Volume One. The game is like chess in that there a variety of pieces each with a unique way of moving, but more akin to checkers in the way pieces capture each other.
Traditional Keckers is played on an 8x8 board, like chess and checkers. However, the traditional black and white colouring of the board has been altered to blue and red. Similarly, the pieces used are blue and red, with blue taking the first turn.
There a four types of pieces in Keckers: Prune, Captain, Queen and King. They start the game in the following positions:
Pieces either move (as a king in chess) or jump (diagonally as in checkers, or orthagonally), with a certain pecking order with regard to what type of pieces may be jumped or captured. Captures are only made by jumping. The pecking order of pieces gives the game a chess like quality without giving the pieces different ways of moving.
There are also two special rules concerning promotion, to make it possible to finish the game in certain situations where the necessary pieces are not available. These rules transmute one type of piece to another higher in the pecking order.
The object of the game is to capture both the opponents King and Queen.
There are a number of variations of Keckers which change the rules to make the game more or less complicated, these variants being:
Keckers has also been adapted to a cross shaped board. Many variations of Keckers can be played on this board, and are described in Volume One of the Rulebook.
Last updated: Wednesday 29th July 1998