Dipole FAQ

What is the point here? What's the object of the game?
Simply put, you want to be the last one still on the board. When all of your opponent's checkers have been removed, you win.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm totally lost.
Mainly you're just moving your stacks forward. When you reach the far end of the board, just keep going forward and remove your stacks from the board. You can move your stacks backward, but only when capturing. Don't make big moves unnecessarily. Remember, you want to be the last one still on the board, not the first one off. Only make a big move (such as moving a five-stack five spaces forward) when making a big kill, or when setting up for a big kill.

My checkers keep mysteriously disappearing from the board for no reason. What's going on?
Yes, your checkers are disappearing from the board, but there is a reason: You are removing them from the board. Normally when you want to make a move, first you click on the stack you want to move and then you click on the destination square, but here's the problem: When you click on the stack you want to move, the following message appears under the board: "You can also choose the number of pieces to remove from the board: [1][2][3]..." Don't click on any of those numbers. That's what's causing your checkers to "mysteriously" disappear.

Why would I ever want to remove my own checkers?
Usually because you have no other choice. You've moved one of your stacks all the way to the far end of the board and there's no place left for your stack to go but off the end of the board.

Why can't I capture your 3-stack with my 4-stack? My 4-stack is bigger.
Probably because your 4-stack is too close to my 3-stack. If you want to capture my 3-stack, you have to do so from a distance of at least three squares.

Hey! I just saw you move sideways. I thought you could only move forward in Dipole.
You can move in any direction when capturing an enemy stack. When making a non-capturing move, you can only move forward.

What does "Distance" mean? That's the total of the distances the checkers have to go to jump off the far end of the board. Starting out you have 12 checkers, each of which has 8 squares to go to jump off the far end of the board. So starting out your Distance is 96 (12x8). The Distances give you a rough idea of who's ahead in the game. You want to have a higher Distance than your opponent.

How do I move my stack?
You have to move the same number of checkers that you want to move in squares:

• Move 1 square, move 1 checker
• Move 2 squares, move 2 checkers
• Move 3 squares, move 3 checkers
• etc.

First click on the stack you want to move from, then click on the square you want to move to.

Look at this example below. You have a 4 stack (i.e. 4 checkers in the stack) on the board:

• You can move 4 checkers as indicated by the 4's
• 3 checkers indicated by the 3's
• 2 checkers indicated by the 2's
• A single checker as indicated by the 1's;

4	.	.	.	4	.	.	.	4
.	3	.	.	.	.	.	3	.
.	.	2	.	2	.	2	.	.
.	.	.	1	.	1	.	.	.
.	.	.	.	4	.	.	.	.

Stack movement is the same for non-capturing moves, capturing moves, and merging moves, except that capturing moves can also be made sideways and backward.

To capture an enemy stack, the capturing stack must have an equal or larger number of checkers than the enemy stack.

How come I can't move 1 or 3 squares directly forward?
That's because Dipole is only played on the dark squares. Moving an odd number directly forward, directly backward, or sideways will result in landing on a white square.