Modern Chinese Checkers is presented here as a new, more dynamic take on the classic game. You must move your marbles into the opposite empty goal triangle before your opponents manage to fill their own. The game is won as soon as the opposite triangle is completely filled with marbles of any colour. (This solves the problem of opponents blocking your goal triangle.) It is not allowed to step into the enemy corners or the central square.
Players alternate turns, moving one marble at a time. A marble may slide to an adjacent empty space, or it may jump over an adjacent marble, of either colour, into the empty space directly on the opposite side. It may also jump across multiple empty spaces in a single leap, provided there is exactly one marble in the middle space of the jump. A marble may continue jumping as long as possible, or the player may choose to stop early. No marbles are ever captured in Chinese Checkers.
It is much faster to advance by chaining a series of jumps than by sliding your marbles forward one space at a time. The most effective strategy is to arrange your marbles in long, continuous sequences that can be jumped over, creating a kind of bridge toward the opposite side. Just be careful that your opponent doesn’t end up using these bridges more effectively than you do. Zillions doesn’t play this game well, but it’s still useful for studying the game.
Despite its name, Chinese Checkers has no historical connection to China. The game is a variation of the 19th-century board game Halma and entered the commercial market in the 1930s.
Any game company is hereby granted permission to produce this game. I irrevocably relinquish all rights to it, together with all other games I have invented and published on my board-game page.
• You can download my free Modern Chinese Checkers program here (updated 2026-03-27), but you must own the software Zillions of Games to be able to run it (I recommend the download version).
• See also Chinese Checkers (The Diamond Game).
© M. Winther, 2026 March
