Chinese checkers

How to play Chinese checkers

The rules

• The board is a six-pointed star with 121 holes. Each player starts in one point of the star, and the aim is to move all your pieces across into the point directly opposite.
• Two players have fifteen pieces each, in facing points. With three, four or six players, each has ten pieces, in the ten holes of their own point. Three players use every other point, so each has an empty point opposite; four players sit in two facing pairs.
• Turns go round clockwise. On your turn, move one piece: either step to an empty neighbouring hole, or jump over a neighbouring piece of any colour into the empty hole straight beyond it. The piece you jump over stays where it is; nothing is captured.
• One move can chain several jumps, in any direction along the lines, as far as the jumps take you. You jump over one piece at a time.
• The first player to bring all their pieces into the opposite point wins.
• The skill is in building ladders: lines of pieces with a gap between each, which a piece can jump along in one move. Your opponents' pieces make ladders just as well as your own.

In this version

• The player at the bottom starts. With two players, the five extra pieces fill the row just in front of each point.
• A player cannot block you by leaving pieces at home in your target point: the point counts as yours once every hole in it is filled and more than half of them hold your pieces.
• The machine moves greedily: each move is the one that brings its pieces furthest forward, with the hindmost piece weighted most. It does not look ahead.
• Tap a piece and every hole it can reach lights up; a tap on a hole moves it there, and the jumps are shown along the way.

New game