Chinese Checkers · Rules & strategy

Board and marbles

The board is a six-pointed star with 121 holes: a central hexagon of 61 holes surrounded by six triangular camps of 10. Each player starts with ten marbles in one camp and aims for the camp directly opposite.

• 2 players: two opposite camps
• 3 players: every other camp (all target camps start empty)
• 4 players: two opposite pairs
• 6 players: every camp

The first seat starts and play continues around the board.

A move: step or jump

Each turn you move exactly one marble in one of two ways:

• Step — one hole to any of the six neighbouring empty holes.
• Jump — straight over a single adjacent marble (yours or anyone’s) into the empty hole directly behind it. If you can jump again from where you land, you may keep going, changing direction freely.

Steps and jumps cannot be mixed, and you cannot land in the same hole twice in one move. Jumped marbles stay put — there are no captures. Tap a marble to light up every hole it can reach; tap a hole and the marble follows its jump path.

Camp rule

During a jump chain you may pass through any camp, but you may not end your move in a camp that is neither your home nor your target. This common rule stops players from parking marbles in empty side camps. A marble that has entered its target camp may move around inside it but may not end a move outside it again.

Winning and anti-blocking

You win when every hole of your target camp is filled and at least one of them holds your own marble. Normally that means all ten of your marbles, but if an opponent refuses to leave their home camp (your target), you still win by filling every remaining hole. Squatting at home is never a winning tactic.

End, ranking and time

The game ends as soon as one player fills their target camp. Everyone else is ranked by remaining distance — the total number of steps from their marbles to the tip of their target camp — with ties sharing a place. After 200 moves per player the game stops and is ranked the same way. Online, each move has 30 seconds; when time runs out, the move that makes the most progress is played for you. If you have no legal move at all, you pass.

Build ladders and bridges

Long jump chains win games. Spread marbles one hole apart in a line and the marbles behind can climb that “ladder” six or eight holes at a time. Often the best move is not the one that goes farthest now but the one that sets up a longer chain next turn. Remember that your opponents’ marbles work as rungs too.

Leave no stragglers

Racing your front marbles ahead tends to leave one or two behind in your home camp. A lone marble has nothing to jump over and must crawl step by step — and those extra moves usually decide the game. Keep your marbles moving as a compact group so they keep serving as stepping stones for each other.

Use the centre, block wisely

The axis through the middle of the board is the shortest road with the most jumping chances. Marbles that drift to the edges run into side camps where they cannot stop. In two-player games, dropping a marble into a gap of your opponent’s ladder can cut a big jump, but every blocking move delays your own race — keep the balance.

Endgame and AI levels

Fill the deepest holes of the target camp, near the tip, first; sitting in the entrance holes blocks your own latecomers. Easy AI plays any forward move, Normal picks the single move that gains the most, and Hard reads several of its own moves ahead to build and then climb ladders.

FAQ