Chinese checkers

How to play Chinese checkers

From the book's pages

• The board is a six-pointed star with 121 holes. Two players have fifteen pieces each, set up in the points directly opposite each other. With three or more players, each has ten pieces, in the ten rearmost holes of their point; three players take every other point, so each has an empty point opposite.
• The aim is to move all your pieces across to the point directly opposite. With three or more players, turns go round clockwise.
• A move is one piece, either one hole to an empty neighbouring hole, or a jump over any piece, whatever its colour, to the empty hole directly beyond it. Several jumps can be chained in one move, in any direction along the lines, as far as the jumps reach. One piece is jumped at a time; the pieces jumped over stay where they are.
• The art is to build «ladders»: rows of pieces with one hole between them, which a piece jumps along in a single move — your own and your opponents'.

My choices

• The player at the bottom starts. With four players the pairs sit directly opposite each other; with two players the five extra pieces fill the row just below the point.
• The book does not say what happens if a player leaves pieces at home and blocks the other's goal. Here the goal is reached when every hole in the point is filled and more than half of them with your own 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