The diagram shows the initial position. The reason for this choice is a natural tendency of draughts games that allow straight forward movement (Turkish, HexDame, Croda), to build up forces along the sides. This initial position creates a certain balance between the center and the sides and demands an economical use of material.

• White begins. Players move - and must move - in turn

• The object is to leave your opponent without a valid move, either by capturing all his pieces, or by blocking them completely. Draws may occur by mutual impotence or three-fold repetition of moves

• A line of men (this includes a single man) may move one square straight or oblique forward, provided the square in front is vacant. In actual play the last man of the line one intends to move is picked up and put in front, and that's how the move is noted down. If a man ends its move on the back rank, it promotes to king. A king moves as the queen in Chess, any distance along an open line, as indicated on the right

• Moving a man or a line of men
• Moving a king

• Although pieces may move diagonally, all captures follow horizontal and vertical (i.e. orthogonal) lines only. Men may capture forwards, backwards and sideways by the short leap. Kings may move queenwise, but they capture only rookwise, by the long leap
• Capturing, whether by men or kings, is compulsory. If a piece makes a capture and is now in a position to effect another one, it must do so. Thus multiple captures may be made in the same turn. When a multiple capture is being made, the captured pieces are only removed at the end of the turn, and it is not allowed to jump over the same piece twice in that turn, although vacant squares may be passed over more than once
• Majority capture takes precedence: if a player has a choice of capturing options, he must choose the option that results in the largest number of pieces being captured (kings and men counting equally). When a king has more than one option in terms of captures and destination squares, it must choose its route so that it maximizes the capturing sequence. If there is more than one way to capture the maximum number of pieces, the player is free to choose
• If a man ends its (capturing) move on the opponent's back row, it is promoted to king. A man passing the back row in a capture, but not ending on it, does not promote

White moves 1. c1e3 (ac5x), 2. e1c3 and the black king must capture four men, ending on d3 where he is stopped by the already captured man on c3, while d2 is still covered by the already captured man on d1.

Included as a variant, even though the game precedes Dameo, is Croda, a draughts game invented in 1995 by Ljuban Dedic of Croatia, 1989 Checkers champion of former Yugoslavia.
Croda actually was the inspiration to invent Dameo. Many things are equal between the two - apart from an other initial position (shown above), there are ...

In Croda, there's no linear movement - a man only moves on his own. And a king moves as a rook in chess: any number of unobstructed squares orthogonally.

All the other rules of Dameo equally apply to Croda.

To play Dameo, choose one of these alternatives (provided you have the Zillions of Games program installed, see below):