Chinese Checkers is a board game that can be played by two to six people. The objective of the game is to place one's pieces in the corner opposite their starting position of a hexagram by single moves or jumps over other pieces.
Essentials
The Chinese Checkers board has 121 indentations/spots 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/centre. The game pieces are usually six sets of colored pieces, ten of each color. Each set of ten pieces begins placed in the spots of one of the star-points. 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.
Hop Across:
The aim of the game is simply to enter all of one's ten pieces 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 piece, 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 piece to an adjacent unoccupied space in any of the six available directions. A hop consists of jumping directly over a single adjacent piece, either one's own or an opponent's, to the unoccupied space directly over and beyond the adjacent piece. It is not mandatory to advance the piece 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 pieces for planned future moves.
Essentially, the basic strategy is to find the longest hopping path that leads closest to, or immediately into, the "home" base (star point) on the opposite side of the board instead of moving step by step, as it obviously requires fewer moves to finish when using multiple jumps in one single move. However, since one or more players can make use of whatever hopping 'ladders' an opponent creates, more advanced strategy requires a player hindering opposing players in addition to helping himself or herself find jumps across the board. Of equal importance are the players' strategies for emptying and filling their origin and destination triangles.
Capture
In the "capture" variation all sixty game pieces are put in the hexagonal field in the center of the game board. The one hole in the center of the board is left unoccupied so that the game board starts out with a symmetrical hexagonal pattern. The players take turns hopping any game pieces over other game pieces on the board; the hopped over pieces are captured (retired from the game, as in the traditional American incarnation of Checkers) and collected in the player's bin.
At the end of the game, the player with the most captured pieces is the winner. The board is tightly packed at the start of the game; as more pieces are captured, the board frees up and multiple captures can often take place in one move. In this game, two or more players can participate. There is no upper limit to the number of players in this game, but if there are more than six players, not everyone will get a fair turn.
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