Chinese Checkers

Chinese checkers or Chinese chequers 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 pitted 6-pointed star by single moves or jumps over other pieces. more...

Home
Action Figures
Beanies
Construction Toys & Kits
Diecast & Vehicles
Toys & Games
Creative Toys/ Activities
Educational Toys
Electronic Pets
Fast Food/ Cereal/ Sweets...
Games
Air Hockey
Board/ Traditional Games
Articulate
Avalon Hill
Backgammon
Balderdash
Battleships
Bingo
Blockbusters
Boggle
Buccaneer
Buckaroo
Carcassonne
Chess
Children's
Chinese Checkers
Cluedo/ Clue
Cranium
Dingbats
Diplomacy
Dominoes
Draughts/ Checkers
Escape From Colditz
Film/ TV
Game of Life
Go
Horror/ Monster
Hotel
Jenga
Kerplunk
Ludo
Mah Jong
Mastermind
Monopoly
Mousetrap
Operation
Othello
Other Board/ Traditional...
Pictionary
Quiz Games
Risk
Risqué
Rummikub
Scrabble
Snakes & Ladders
Solitaire
Space/ Sci-Fi
Sports
Stratego
Strategy
Totopoly
Trivial Pursuit
Twister
Vintage Games (Pre-1980)
Vintage Games 1950s
Vintage Games 1960s
Vintage Games 1970s
Vintage Games Pre-1950
War
Who Wants to Be a...
Card Games
Bridge
Cribbage
Other Card Games
Playing Cards
Poker
Rummy
Top Trumps
Crazy Bones
Dice/ Dice-Based Games
Drinking/ After Dinner Games
Electronic Games
Executive Toys/ Gadgets
Game Pieces/ Parts
Jokes & Pranks
Mighty Beanz
Murder Mystery
Other Games
Pocket Money Toys/ Games
Pogs
Travel Games
Jigsaws & Puzzles
Other Toys & Games
Outdoor Toys & Activities
Pre-School/ Young Children
Radio-Controlled Toys
Scalextric & Slot Car
Soft Toys/ Stuffed Animals
Steam
Toy Soldiers
Toys Model Kits
TV & Film Character Toys
Vintage/ Classic Toys
Wargames & Role-Playing

There are 121 marble slots on a Chinese checker board.

History

Despite being called \"Chinese checkers,\" this game does not actually originate from China or elsewhere in Asia. It is also not a variation on checkers or xiangqi (also known as \"Chinese chess\"). Instead, the name originated in the United States, when an American tried to make the game sound more exotic, and the game itself was invented in Germany in 1893 under the name Stern-Halma, as a variation on the older game of Halma. The \"Stern\" in \"Stern-Halma\" refers to the fact that the board is star-shaped rather than square as in the game of Halma. The game was mostly introduced to Chinese-speaking regions by the Japanese.

The Chinese checkers board is laid out in a six-pointed star. The game pieces are usually six sets of colored marbles, ten of each color. The ten marbles are arranged as a triangle in the starting position in one of the corners of the star. A fast-paced version is played in Hong Kong, and was especially popular in the 1980s.

Hop across

In the \"hop across\" variation, each player puts his or her own colored marbles on one corner of the star and attempts to relocate them all to the opposite corner. Players take turns moving one marble, either a single step or a chain of one or more hops. A step consists of moving a marble to an adjacent unoccupied space in any of the six directions. In the diagram at right, Green might move the topmost marble one space down and to the left. A hop consists of jumping over a single adjacent marble, either one's own or an opponent's, to an unoccupied space directly opposite. In the diagram at right, Red might advance the indicated marble by a chain of three hops in a 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 future moves.

The basic strategy is to find the longest hopping path instead of moving step by step. 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. Of equal importance are the players' strategies for emptying and filling their origin and destination triangles. Games between experts are rarely decided by more than a couple of moves.

Read more at Wikipedia.org