The beginning (before opposing pieces come into contact) is usually a set-piece battle, with players setting up their favoured openings. In non-electronic versions, the number of moves is not normally counted.Ī game of Halma has three distinct phases. Fast-advancing players occasionally attempt to blockade an opposing piece, but this tactic can backfire if the other player is aware of it. Some sites implement a rule variation stating that a player automatically loses if they still have a piece in their start region after a certain number of moves (typically 30 for the 8×8 game, 50 for the 10×10 game). Halma set from the 1890s, showing box and pieces The name is misleading, since the game has no historical connection with China, nor is it a checkers game. Chinese Checkers, a variant of Halma, was originally published in 1892 as Stern-Halma (German for 'Star Halma') and later renamed upon marketing to the United States to appear more exotic.The mechanic of jumping pieces is reminiscent of draughts (checkers) but differs in that no opposing pieces are ever captured or otherwise withdrawn from the board nor is jumping compulsory.Otherwise, play proceeds clockwise around the board. If the current play results in having every square of the opposing camp occupied by one's own pieces, the acting player wins.Once a piece has reached the opposing camp, a play cannot result in that piece leaving the camp.After any jump, one may make further jumps using the same piece, or end the play.The piece that was jumped over is unaffected and remains on the board.Place the piece in the empty square on the opposite side of the jumped piece.An adjacent piece of any color can be jumped if there is an adjacent empty square on the directly opposite side of that piece.One or more jumps over adjacent pieces:.Place the piece in an empty adjacent square.Each player's turn consists of moving a single piece of one's own color in one of the following plays:.Pieces can move in eight possible directions (orthogonally and diagonally).Players randomly determine who will move first.Valid (green) and invalid (red) moves of a white pawn in Halma On each turn, a player either moves a single piece to an adjacent open square, or jumps over one or more pieces in sequence. For four-player games played in teams, the winner is the first team to race both sets of pieces into opposing camps. The game is won by being first to transfer all of one's pieces from one's own camp into the camp in the opposing corner. The game is played by two or four players seated at opposing corners of the board. Piece colors are typically black and white for two-player games, and various colors or other distinction in games for four players. Pieces may be small checkers or counters, or wooden or plastic cones or men resembling small chess pawns. The gameboard is checkered and divided into 16×16 squares. His inspiration was the English game Hoppity which was devised in 1854. Halma (from the Greek word ἅλμα meaning 'jump') is a strategy board game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, an American thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. Board with 'camps' marked for two players (blue) and four players (red)

Vintage chinese checkers