Strategy guide

How to win at Chinese Checkers

Two-player strategy, shown on real games played by JumpStar, our AI.

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Most of the boards below come from one complete JumpStar game you can replay move by move. The rest come from JumpStar's self-play games, picked because each one shows a single idea clearly.

1. Think in turns saved, not holes gained

Chinese Checkers is a race, so what you're really spending is turns. A step moves one marble one hole. A good chain of jumps can move a marble six or eight rows, and it also costs one turn. So when you move, think about how many turns that move saved you, not just how far it went.

2. Open from the corner, then build a road

Long chains need setting up, and the setup starts on move one. We checked 833 games from recent JumpStar versions that began from the normal starting position, and every one opened the same way: step the marble on a front corner of the triangle forward one hole. It looks like nothing, but it opens a gap. On the next turn, the marble behind it jumps twice through that gap and lands out in the board.

From there, keep adding to the same line. Marbles spaced with one empty hole between them form a road: each one gives the marble behind it something to jump over, so the back marble can jump all the way past the front. A marble pushed far ahead on its own does the opposite. Nothing near it can be jumped, and it's too far ahead for anything behind it to use.

Here are the first eight moves of the featured game. Step through them and watch how each jump uses the line and adds to it.

3. Use their marbles too

In a two-player game your opponent's marbles are heading through the same middle of the board, straight at you. Any marble can be jumped, yours or theirs, so their pieces can be part of your road too. When you look for a long jump, look at the empty holes behind the marbles. Those landing holes decide where a chain can go.

4. Watch where you land

This works for your opponent too. Every marble you leave in the middle is one they can jump over, so a landing hole is never only yours. Before a long jump, look at where you'll end up and what that marble lets them do next.

5. Block the landing, not the marble

If landing holes are what make a chain work, they're also how you stop one. You don't need to block the marble that's about to jump. Step one of your marbles into a hole the chain needs to land in, and the rest of the chain is gone.

6. Count the race before you block

Blocking costs you a turn you didn't use to move toward your own goal, so it pays to know who's winning first. A simple way to keep score: count how many rows each of your marbles still has to travel to reach your goal triangle, and add them up. Then do the same for your opponent. It's a rough count, because one jump can cover several rows, but it's close enough to tell you who's ahead.

7. Leave no marble behind

One of the most painful ways to lose a game you were winning is to send nine marbles forward and leave one at home. With nothing left near it to jump over, that last marble has to step, turn after turn.

After each move, find the piece farthest from the goal. Can it use your road next turn? If not, bring it forward while it still has marbles to jump over.

8. Fill the back of the goal first

The front of the goal triangle is easy to reach and easy to clog. Fill those holes too early and the marbles still coming have nowhere good to land. Get to the back holes while the board is still open.

How strategy changes with more players

In two-player Chinese Checkers, every block has one target. On three-, four-, and six-player boards, the middle can change completely before your next turn. Someone else might extend your road, take your landing hole, or move the marble you were planning to jump.

Keep two possible routes through the middle, and check who moves before you before counting on someone else's marble. Blocking is also worth less, because slowing one opponent just helps everyone else.

Four things to practice

Common questions

Further study

If you want to go deeper, these papers study the game mathematically and computationally.

• The Shortest Game of Chinese Checkers and Related Problems - a mathematical study of minimum-move transfers and cooperative play.
• Chinese Checkers AI research - strategy learning and game-playing methods.
• Efficient Chinese Checkers implementation - board representation and search engineering.