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Chinese Marble Game Rules

Chinese Checkers, despite the marble board game's name, was first patented in 1892 by the German game company Ravensburger. The game was originally published under the name Stern-Halma, after the American board game Halma, which uses similar gameplay, but it was changed to Chinese Checkers in 1928 to keep with rising interests in all things deriving from Eastern Asia. Several manufacturers began creating Chinese Checkers boards in the 1930s and the Milton Bradley Co. finally got a patent on Chinese Checkers in 1941.

Supplies
- Chinese Checkers is played on a board in the shape of a six-pointed star. The interior of the star is in the shape of a hexagram with 61 holes, each side of the hexagon is five holes long. Each point of the star is in the shape of a triangle with 10 holes, and four holes create each side of the triangle. The game pieces consist of six different-colored sets of 10 marbles each.
Setup
- Chinese Checkers can be played with six, four, three or two players. When playing with six players, each player begins with all 10 marbles in one of the six points of the star. When playing with two players, the players start the game with their marbles in points that are opposite one another. When playing with four players, each player starts in a point facing one other player's starting position. When playing with three players, each player starts with her marbles in a point that is equidistant from both other players.
Gameplay
- Throughout the game, each player takes turns moving a single marble of her own color. Marbles can be moved to an adjacent space, or they can make one or more hops over other marbles. A hop is performed by moving a marble over an adjacent marble and into the hole directly beyond it (pieces are not removed from the board when hopping). After a hop is performed, a player has the option, but is not required, to hop over more pegs if the opportunity presents itself. Marbles can move in any direction and can hop over opponent's marbles or your own. Once a peg has reached the triangle opposite their starting position, however, it cannot be moved out of the triangle, only within it.
Winning
- The goal of Chinese Checkers is to move all 10 marbles across the board to the opposite triangle. The first player to take all of his marbles from their starting triangle to the opposite triangle is declared the winner.

Board Games