Chinese Checkers is a race across a six-pointed star. Each player starts with ten marbles in one corner and tries to move them all into the opposite corner first. Nothing is ever captured: you win by moving quickly, chaining long hops and using other marbles as stepping stones.
The board and the goal
The board is a star of 121 holes. You play the blue marbles in the bottom corner, and your target is the corner straight across the board. Play against one computer in the opposite corner, two computers in alternate corners, or five computers with every corner full.
The first player to fill their target corner wins.
Steps and hops
On your turn, move one marble: either one step into an empty neighboring hole, or a hop.
A hop jumps over a single marble right next to yours, of any color, into the empty hole just beyond it. The jumped marble stays where it is.
After a hop you can keep hopping, in any direction, as long as each hop lands in an empty hole. A step always ends the move.
You may hop through any corner, but a move can only end in the middle of the board, your home corner or your target corner.
Playing on Everyday Games
Tap one of your marbles and every hole it can reach lights up, including the far ends of hop chains. Tap a glowing hole and the marble hops there along the way.
Small dots show the path of the last move, so you can follow each computer’s hops.
Undo takes back your last move along with the computers’ replies. Resign ends the game as a loss.
Choose Easy, Normal or Hard and the number of computers under New game. Your best winning time is kept for each level.
The blocking rule and draws
An opponent could try to stop you by leaving marbles in your target corner. From your 30th move on, if every hole of your target is filled and at least one of the marbles there is yours, you win anyway.
If you have no legal move, you pass. A game that reaches 200 moves each with no winner is a draw, though that almost never happens.
Strategy tips
Build ladders: line marbles up with one-hole gaps so that later marbles can hop the length of the board in a single turn.
Use the computer’s marbles as stepping stones too. Any marble can be hopped.
Don’t leave a straggler behind. A lone marble at the back has nothing to hop over and costs many single steps at the end.
Fill your target from the point outward, so your last marbles have open holes near the front.
On Hard, the computer watches for ladders you leave open, so build bridges that help you more than they help it.