Your first game of Chinese Checkers

Set up

The board is a six-pointed star with 121 holes. Each player starts with 10 marbles of one color, filling one of the star’s points, their camp. With two players, you take opposite camps. Three, four or six can play, each in their own camp. Your goal is to move all your marbles across the board into the camp directly opposite yours, called your target.

Your first turn

A move is one of two things. Step a marble into an empty hole next to it, or hop it over a marble next to it, of any color, into the empty hole directly beyond. After a hop, the same marble may hop again, and again, as long as there is another jump to make, so one marble can travel a long way in a single turn. A turn is either a step or hops, never both.

Marbles may only stop in the middle of the board, in your own camp, or in your target camp. They can hop through other camps, but they can’t stop there. And once a marble is in your target camp, it can only move to another hole in that camp.

How a game ends

You finish when every hole in your target camp is filled. At least one marble must be yours, and any others must belong to the player whose camp it was. The first player to finish wins.

A short example

One of your marbles has an opponent’s marble next to it, with an empty hole directly behind. You hop over it and land in the hole. There is another marble beside you now, with an empty hole beyond that one too. You hop again, and then once more. Three hops in one turn put that marble far across the board.