Directions for Chinese Checkers

Equipment

• The game board is a six-pointed star made up of a series of holes. There are 10 holes in each point of the star. The center is a hexagon with five holes on each side, and rows of holes on the interior. Six different-colored sets of 10 pegs or marbles are the playing pieces.

Preparation

• Chinese checkers can be played by two, three, four or six players. When setting up, each player sets up his pegs in a corner of the star (triangle) opposite one other player. If there are three players, set up pegs in every other triangle. Each player uses 10 pegs of the same color.

Objective

• The goal of the game is to be the first player to move all her pegs across the board and into the opposite triangle.

Play

• Toss a coin or roll a die to determine who starts. Play begins by moving one peg to an adjacent hole. This ends the turn. Once pegs become spaced out, a player can hop over another peg to move farther. Multiple hops can be made in a single turn as long as there are adjacent pegs to hop over. A player cannot leap over more than one peg in one hop. It may be possible to move all the way across the board in a single turn with a series of hops.
  Unlike the game checkers, pegs are never removed from the board, even when they are hopped over. Pegs can move in any direction on the board, but once they are within the opposite triangle, they cannot move back outside of it.

Finish

• The first player to fill all destination holes with his own pegs wins, ending the game.
  Sometimes a player will choose to block by refusing to move his peg from its starting place, therefore making it impossible for another player to fill her destination holes. Determine before starting the game how to handle this result. Options include:
  --A player wins when all available destination holes are filled.
  --A player poised to win with all available destination holes filled is entitled to swap the blocking peg with one of his own.
  --Allow the block as a legal play.