Sternhalma
Sternhalma, the game English speakers call Chinese checkers, is a race across a six-pointed star. Each player starts with ten pieces in one point of the star and races them into the point opposite. A piece steps to the next hole, or hops over a piece beside it, anyone's, into the hole beyond, and it may keep hopping as long as there is a hop to make. Nothing is ever taken. The first player with every piece home wins, and the others race on for the places after.
The board
- A star of one hundred and twenty-one holes: a hexagon of sixty-one holes in the middle, and six points of ten holes each round it.
- Every hole has up to six neighbours: two along its row and two in each of the rows above and below it.
- A hole is named by its row, a letter from a at the top point to q at the bottom, and its place in that row counted from the left: a1 is the top of the star and i5 is the centre.
Setting up
- Two, three or four play on this site. Each of you has ten pieces, which fill one point of the star, and each player has a colour of their own.
- With two, you start in opposite points. With three, every other point is used, so nobody starts opposite anybody. With four, two pairs of opposite points are used and two points stay empty.
- Your home is the point opposite the one you start in. On the board it is tinted in your colour, and the board is turned so your own pieces start at the bottom.
- Who moves first is drawn for each game, and the turn then goes round the table.
A step
- On your turn you move one piece. The simplest move is a step: to a neighbouring hole that is empty, in any of the six directions.
- You may move in any direction you like, backwards and sideways included, and stop in any hole, the points nobody is using included.
A hop
- A piece next to another piece, with an empty hole straight beyond it, may hop over it into that hole.
- The piece you hop over may be yours or anybody's. It stays where it is: nothing is ever taken.
A chain of hops
- After a hop the same piece may hop again from where it landed, and again after that, in any direction, as long as each hop is over one piece into the empty hole beyond.
- You may stop after any hop. A move is either one step or a chain of hops, never a step and a hop together.
- On this site you choose the piece and the hole it ends in, and the way it goes there is shown before you let go.
Getting home
- You are home when every one of your pieces is in your home point.
- One thing is this site's own rule, because the traditional rules do not say: a piece left in your home by somebody else cannot keep you out. When every hole of your home is full and at least one of the pieces in it is yours, you are home.
Places: the others play on
- The first player home wins and takes first place. The others race on, and the next home is second, and so on.
- A player who is home leaves the turn, and their pieces stay where they are, in the way or helping, as pieces do.
- With two players, the first home wins the game.
How a game ends
- The game ends when only one player is still racing. That player is last.
- If you have no move at all, your turn is passed for you. If every player still racing has to pass in a row, the game ends. That is this site's rule, and it almost never happens.
- The game also ends after a thousand moves for each player, counting passes, which is this site's limit and far longer than a game takes. Either way, the players still racing are placed by how far their pieces have left to go.
- If you resign you are placed behind everybody who is home or still racing, and the others play on while two of them are still racing. A missed move deadline puts you out in the same way, unless the program takes your seat over because other people are still playing.
Ladders
- Every piece on the board is a stepping stone, for everybody. A line of pieces with gaps between them lets a piece hop the length of the board in one move.
- So the strong move is often the one that builds a ladder for yourself without leaving one for the players behind you, and the weak one is the step that leaves a piece stranded at the back with nothing to hop over.
- A piece that only ever steps takes many moves to cross the star. A piece that hops crosses it in a few.
Sternhalma was published in Germany in 1892, a star-shaped form of the older Halma, and was sold in the United States from 1928 as Chinese Checkers, though it has nothing to do with China or with checkers. The rules on this page are the common ones described by the English and German Wikipedia. Three things here are this site's own, where those rules are silent: a piece left in your home cannot keep you out, a player with no move is passed, and the game has a limit of moves. George I. Bell showed in 2009 that a player crossing the star alone needs at least twenty-seven moves, and two players racing at least thirty.
Sternhalma terms
- a hole
- one of the one hundred and twenty-one places on the star where a piece may stand
- a point
- one of the six triangles of ten holes round the star; you start in one and race to the one opposite
- home
- the point opposite the one you start in
- a step
- a piece moving to a neighbouring empty hole
- a hop
- a piece jumping over one piece beside it into the empty hole beyond
- a chain
- several hops by one piece in one move