Checkers Gomoku

The marriage of checkers and Gomoku. Played on an 8X8 board, with 12 checkers each. The game is played in two phases. 1) To start the game each player places a piece on an empty space and taking turns continue to do this until all pieces are on the board. 2) Then the second phase begins where they can move one piece each turn. A piece can move to any adjacent empty cell, in all 8 directions. Players are attempting to create 5-in-a-row of their own colour either orthogonally or diagonally. When they achieve 5-in-a-row the player can remove one of the opponent's pieces. The goal is to reduce the opponent's piece total to 4.