About multiple captures (#10036 spoilers)

#1

I was solving https://www.checkercruncher.com/problems/10036 and after 25-30 7-2 30-26 2-6 10-14 19-15 there are two capture-sequences “available” for red: 26-19-10 (with the king) and 1-10-19 (with a piece, in my visualization i “forgot” there was a white piece in 15 so i effectively only calculated 1-10, never mind that i “saw” the white piece in 15 while calculating the king sequence).

I got confused about multiple captures, checked the rules and wikipedia for english draughts and got even more confused, so i think it could be useful for newbies such as myself to have things clarified:

Given that there’s more than one capture possible, is it compulsory to pick the “longest one” (captures more material), or is it compulsory to use king in detriment of a regular piece? or am i free to pick the capture I want whatever any condition?

#2

The only rule is you must capture and you must finish all the captures in the sequence you choose.

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#3

As lloyd mentioned, in English checkers, you may choose any capturing path but you must follow that path to the end. There is a rules page but you’re right, it doesn’t give the details when multiple captures are available. I’ll try to clean it up some this coming week.

And a little background, there are lots of versions of checkers and every version has some implementation of forced captures. For instance most versions that have flying kings require that you capture as many pieces as possible. Some versions require that you capture with kings if possible, or capture kings if possible. And in some men cannot capture kings, which I think is really weird. But english, aka straight, checkers requires only that you capture.

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