One player assembles the board by placing the cards face up in an 8 x 8 grid, leaving 12 empty spaces, the cards and empty spaces being considered spaces of the game board. The other player chooses from which end of the board he wishes to start. Each player places his 12 checkers in what is from his perspective the lower right corner of the board in the following configuration.
o__o
_ooo
_ooo
oooo
The player who assembled the board makes the first move. Moves are as in Halma: one checker is moved one space in any direction or jumped in any direction over friendly or opposing pieces. Jumped pieces are not removed from the board. Only one checker may occupy a space at any given time. A turn consists of each player making one move.
After every third turn, each player forms a five-card poker hand from among the cards covered by his checkers. The player who moved second announces his hand first. Hands are ranked as is usual in poker. The player with the losing hand removes one of his checkers from the board.
Each player can use a given hand only once per game. Hands are considered distinct only if they are announced differently. For example, a king-high flush in spades is a single hand regardless of what the lesser cards are, and four tens is a single hand no matter what the fifth card is.
Play continues until one player has only four checkers remaining on the board, at which time the other player wins.
Variants
64-card deck: To replace the empty spaces, introduce three new ranks of cards: foxes, lions, and dragons, which rank in ascending order between tens and jacks.
High-low Checkers Poker: This is played in the same way as Checkers Poker, except that after the sixth, twelfth, eighteenth, etc. turns, players compare low hands. The player with the higher-ranked hand removes one of his checkers from the board.
Play with a die: Roll a die at the start of each turn to determine whether hands will be compared at the end of the turn. In Checkers Poker, a roll of 5 or 6 indicates that hands should be compared. In High-low Checkers Poker, a roll of 1 indicates that low hands should be compared, and a roll of 6 that high hands should be compared.
Play may also be varied by using other starting configurations of the checkers and by choosing some cards to be wild.