see: Checkers (disambiguation) Chinese Checkers is a board game that can be played by two to six people. It is a variant of Halma; the objective of the game is to place one's pieces in the corner opposite their starting position of a pitted hexagram by single moves or jumps over other pieces.

Essentials

The Chinese Checkers board has 121 indentations arranged to form a six-pointed star much like a regular hexagram, with ten such spots within each triangular star-point of the hexagram, and 61 within its hexagon. The game pieces are usually six sets of colored pieces (typically marbles), ten of each color. Each set of ten pieces begins placed in the spots of one of the star-points.Bernardo Johns, Stephanie; The Ethnic Almanac. Doubleday Publishing (1981). ISBN 0385141432 Play rotates amongst contestants in fixed order, each player making one move before the next player. A piece moves either to an adjacent spot or, by a “jump” over another piece, to a spot two places removed. The objective of the game is to place one's pieces in the opposite corner.

History

Despite being called “Chinese Checkers”, this game does not originate from China or any part of Asia. Chinese Checkers is also not a variation of checkers. The game itself was invented in Germany in 1893 under the name “Stern-Halma”, as a variation on the older American game of Halma. The “Stern” (German for star) refers to the star-shape of the board (in contrast with the square board of Halma). The name “Chinese checkers” originated in the United States, as a marketing scheme by Bill and Jack Pressman in 1928. The Pressman company's game was originally called "Hop Ching Checkers".

(The game was mostly introduced to Chinese-speaking regions by the Japanese.)

Hop across

The aim of the game is simply to enter all of one's ten marbles into the opposite "Home base" (star point) on the opposite side of the board before any other player in the game finishes entering his/her pieces likewise.

In the "hop across", most popular variation, each player puts his or her own colored marbles on one of the six points or corners of the star and attempts to relocate them all to the opposite corner. Players take turns moving one marble, either by moving it one single adjacent step or moving a chain of one or any other number of available hops or 'jumps', as they are often called. A step consists of moving a marble to an adjacent unoccupied space in any of the six available directions. In the diagram at right, Green might move the topmost marble diagonally one space down and to the left. A hop consists of jumping directly over a single adjacent marble, either one's own or an opponent's, to the unoccupied space directly over and beyond the adjacent marble. In the diagram at right, Red might advance the indicated marble by a chain of three hops in one single move. It is not mandatory to advance the marble by as many hops as is possible in the chain. In some instances a player may choose to stop the move part way through the chain to impede the opponent's progress or to align their marbles for planned future moves.