How To Play Chinese Checkers

Chinese Checkers Basics

People can learn how to play Chinese Checkers when they want to play more than a standard 2-player game of checkers. Chinese Checkers allows people to play from 2 to 6 people and is a little more complicated, but not much so. It takes a few minutes to learn how to play chinese checkers, which is a lot less complicated than chess. Given the ability to play with more than two players, the game has been a favorite of families for generations.

About Chinese Checkers

First of all, “Chinese checkers” is neither a variant of checkers, nor was it invented in China. Chinese checkers was actually invented in Germany as a variation of a game named “Halma”, which was a two-to-four player game. Originally, Chinese Checkers was known as “stern-halma”. That’s because halma was played on a square board like chess or checkers, while stern-helma was played on a star-shaped board.

Note: “Stern” is the German word for “star” and the star shape described was a six-pointed star.

When Stern-Halma was first marketed in the United States in 1928, the American manufacturers obviously needed a more marketable name. They called it “Hop Ching Checkers”. Eventually, this became Chinese checkers.

Playing Chinese Checkers

Each player begins with ten marbles in their corner of the board. Each player’s “home” is one of the six points of the star, with the ten marbles filling up the entire star.

To move a marble, you must move it in one of six different directions to another point directly adjacent on the board. A player can also jump any single marble that is adjacent, if the space directly opposite is unoccupied. In this way, a player can jump a marble far ahead by executing a series of jumps in one turn, if the marbles line up correctly.

Chinese Checkers Endgame

The point of the game is to get all ten of your marbles moved from the point of your star to the point of the star directly opposite your starting point on the board.

Chinese Checkers Strategy

The strategy of Chinese checkers is to set up as many jumps as possible for your marbles, because this lets you finish the game in fewer moves than your opponent. To that end, you will occasionally move your marbles to block advantageous moves by one of your opponents.

Jumping Multiple Marbles on a Turn

If you have multiple jumps you can perform with a marble on your turn, you don’t necessarily have to make all possible jumps. In fact, you can stop short in order to block possible jumps by your opponent or opponents.

Also, you can jump other peoples’ marbles and are not restricted to only jumping your own. Because of this rule, games between expert players often take only a few moves.

Chinese Checkers Variants

There are all kinds of variation to Chinese Checkers. For instance, there is a quick-play version of Chinese Checkers played in Hong Kong. There is also a “capture” version, where all sixty marbles are placed on the hexagonal pattern of the board and the point is to capture marbles as you would in checkers, by jumping them. The winner is the one with the most captures by the end of the game.

Common variations for beginners tend to deal with the number of players. In a 2-player game, you’ll line your marbles across the board opposite from one another. In a 3-player game, there are two choices. One, each player can play 2 colors, or each player lines up opposite an empty point of the star. In a 4-player game, all sides line up opposite of an opponent. In a 5-player game, one team will have the advantage of playing into a star that’s unoccupied, so the team opposite the open star should be the team considered less skilled, to even the odds.

In this way, you can figure out how to play chinese checkers in all kinds of new ways and variations. I enjoy the traditional old style the best, though I also enjoy a good game of Capture Chinese Checkers.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Board Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “How To Play Chinese Checkers”

1. How To Play Checkers says:

   January 5, 2010 at 7:05 pm

   [...] « How To Play Chinese Checkers [...]
2. Chinese Checkers Rules says:

   January 12, 2010 at 4:11 pm

   [...] Solitaire Games How To Play Checkers How To Play Chinese Checkers Most Popular Online Games Popular Party [...]

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