TL;DR: Damath is a Filipino board game that fuses dama, the local version of checkers, with arithmetic, and DepEd has backed it since DepEd Order No. 85, s. 1997, which institutionalised an annual national DAMATHS awards activity. Today the competition mostly lives at division and regional level, split into seven grade-level categories running from Counting Damath in Grades 1 and 2 up to Polynomial Damath in Grade 10. There is no official DepEd printable board file. Division memoranda instruct organisers to use "the official DepEd Damath rules and scoring system" for each category, but neither those memoranda nor DO 85 attach a board template, so every printable circulating online is teacher-made. If you are preparing a contestant, the authoritative board, chip set and rules are the ones the organising committee supplies.
If you searched for a printable Damath board and found forty different versions that disagree with each other, that is not your fault. The game has a real place in DepEd programming and a real order behind the competition, but it has never had a nationally published board artwork or rulebook the way a curriculum guide is published. This guide separates what DepEd has actually issued from what the wider Damath community has produced.
What Damath Actually Is
The game is played on an eight-by-eight board with coordinates numbered 0 to 7 along each side, laid out like a checkers board. Pieces move and capture the way they do in dama: diagonal moves, forward capture, promotion to dama on reaching the far row.
The mathematics comes from two additions. First, each piece carries a numeric value, and the values differ depending on which version is being played. Second, the playable squares each carry an operation symbol. When a capture happens, the score for that capture is computed by applying the operation printed on the landing square to the capturing piece's value and the captured piece's value. A dama doubles the resulting score, and a dama capturing a dama quadruples it. The winner is the player with the higher total, except in the Sci-Dama derivative where the lower score wins.
That single design decision is why the game scales across grades. Swap the chip values from whole numbers to fractions, to integers, to radicals, to polynomials, and the same board drills a completely different set of competencies without changing a rule.
The DepEd Order Behind It
The issuance to cite is DepEd Order No. 85, s. 1997, "Implementing Guidelines on the Institutionalization of the Annual DAMATHS Awards for Excellence in Math and Science," dated 28 October 1997. It set the activity for the last Thursday of February each year, describes DAMATHS as an adaptation of the recreational sci-math indigenous dama board game, and identifies the activity as a joint undertaking with what was then the Department of Science and Technology and a private foundation. Participants at the national level were the first-prize winners of the regional competitions, together with their coaches and chaperones, and the order reminded schools that the existing policy on non-disruption of classes applied.
Two honest caveats about that order. It is nearly three decades old, and DepEd has not published a superseding national Damath issuance that we could locate. It also does not contain the game's rules, board design or chip values. It is a competition-administration order, not a curriculum document. So citing DO 85 for "DepEd endorses Damath" is fair; citing it for "these are the official rules" is not.
For how to check whether an old order like this is still live, see our guide on how to find DepEd orders.
The Seven Categories, by Grade Level
The version of the competition running in schools now is organised by division and regional offices as part of the Mathematics Olympics. The Schools Division of Sarangani memorandum for its 2025 Division Mathematics Olympics sets the ladder out explicitly:
| Grade level | Damath category |
|---|---|
| Grades 1 to 2 | Counting Damath |
| Grades 3 to 4 | Whole Number Damath |
| Grades 5 to 6 | Fraction Damath |
| Grade 7 | Integers Damath |
| Grade 8 | Rational Number Damath |
| Grade 9 | Radical Damath |
| Grade 10 | Polynomial Damath |
The same memorandum describes Damath as an individual event, one contestant per category per division, run as round robin or single elimination at the organising committee's discretion, scored one point for a win, half a point for a draw and none for a loss or default. Gadgets are banned during play, and the judges' decisions are final. It also states plainly that "the official DepEd Damath rules and scoring system shall be used" for each of the seven types, without reproducing those rules in the memorandum.
That phrasing is the crux of the printable problem, and it is worth naming rather than papering over. The memorandum assumes a national rulebook that is not attached to it and is not published on the DepEd website. In practice, organisers work from long-circulating contest rules and supply their own boards. Wider variants also exist outside the standard ladder, including binary and trigonometric Damath and the Sci-Dama family, but these are not in the seven-category competition structure.
Does the Ladder Still Match the Curriculum?
This is the part most Damath write-ups skip. The grade-to-topic mapping above was built when Grades 1 to 10 mathematics ran on the 2016 curriculum guide, where Grade 9 covered radicals and Grade 10 covered polynomials and polynomial functions.
The Grades 1 to 10 mathematics curriculum has since been revised. The MATATAG curriculum, issued under DepEd Order No. 010, s. 2024, changed both the shape and the sequencing of the Grades 1 to 10 mathematics curriculum. Grade 7 under the MATATAG mathematics curriculum guide does still cover the set of integers, the four operations with integers, simplification of numerical expressions involving integers and absolute value, so Integers Damath for Grade 7 remains a clean match.
The safe rule for teachers: before you use a Damath category to drill a specific grade, open the MATATAG curriculum guide for that grade and confirm the topic is actually placed there, rather than assuming the ladder still tracks the syllabus. Our MATATAG curriculum guide explains what changed, and our DepEd mathematics curriculum guide explainer walks through how the content domains are laid out.
About That Printable Board
Search demand for a printable Damath board is high, and the honest answer is that DepEd does not host one. What you will find is one of three things: a school-made board shared by a teacher, a commercial board sold by an educational supplier, or a scanned board from a textbook or workbook. None of these is more official than the others.
If you are printing one for classroom use, the practical checks are simple. Confirm the board is eight by eight with coordinates 0 to 7. Confirm the operation symbols are printed on the playable squares and match the four operations your grade level needs. Confirm the chip set matches the category, because a whole-number chip set will not run a Fraction Damath game. And if the board is for a competition rather than a lesson, use whatever the organising committee issues, because that is the set your contestant will actually play on.
Where Damath Sits in the Curriculum Now
Damath is a Grades 1 to 10 activity. The competition ladder ends at Grade 10, and there is no senior high category. DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026, the Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum signed 4 June 2026, restructured Senior High School into five Grade 11 core subjects and elective clusters, and it does not mention Damath at any point. Senior high learners can coach juniors or officiate, but the game is not part of their own subject load. For the broader picture of how Grades 1 to 12 fit together, see our K to 12 curriculum guide.
One last note for anyone using Damath to teach rather than to compete. The scoring depends entirely on applying the correct operation in the correct order, which makes it a natural companion to work on operation order. Our GEMDAS order of operations guide covers the convention DepEd uses, which is what a learner needs before Integers Damath stops being guesswork.
Looking for a school with strong mathematics programmes? Browse schools and compare programmes, tuition and reviews across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- DepEd — DO 85, s. 1997, Implementing Guidelines on the Institutionalization of the Annual DAMATHS Awards for Excellence in Math and Science
- DepEd Schools Division of Sarangani — Division Memorandum CID-2025-310, Additional Information on the 2025 Division Mathematics Olympics (PDF)
- DepEd Schools Division of Northern Samar — Division Science, Technology and Mathematics Fair 2025, listing Damath elementary and secondary categories (PDF)
- DepEd — MATATAG Mathematics curriculum guide, Grades 1, 4 and 7 (official PDF)
- DepEd — DO 010, s. 2024, Policy Guidelines on the Implementation of the MATATAG Curriculum
- DepEd — DO 017, s. 2026, Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum
- Wikipedia — Damath, for the origin account and the list of variants
- SchoolFinderPH — MATATAG Curriculum Guide
- SchoolFinderPH — DepEd Mathematics Curriculum Guide
