Chinese Checkers — free online against the computer

Ten pegs each on the full 121-hole star. You start in the bottom triangle and must get every peg into the top one; the computer is doing the same in the other direction. On your turn you either move one peg to a neighbouring hole, or hop it over a peg into the empty hole directly beyond — and a hop can be chained as far as the board allows.

Your score is wins in a row, and the computer looks further ahead each time you beat it. A half-finished game is saved if you close the tab. Free, no download, no sign-up.

How to play

• Tap one of your pegs to select it. Every hole it can reach lights up green.
• A step moves to a touching hole. A hop jumps over one peg — yours or the computer's — into the empty hole immediately beyond.
• Hops chain. One move can be four or five hops in a row, and that is how the board is crossed quickly.
• A peg that has reached the far triangle cannot leave it, so progress is never undone.
• Get all ten home to win. Your top 5 is kept on this device.

The ladder, and why hopping over your own pegs is the whole game

Beginners move pegs one hole at a time and lose to people who never seem to hurry. The difference is that a good player is not moving pegs, they are building a ladder.

A hop needs a peg to jump over, and it does not matter whose. So a peg sitting in the middle of the board is not a peg that has been left behind — it is a rung. Place them at every other hole along your route and a single later move can travel the length of the star in one turn, while your opponent is still stepping. The strongest players in a real game spend the opening arranging that staircase and the middle game running everything up it.

Two habits follow. Move the back pegs first. The peg furthest from home is the one that will need the most turns, and it is also the one most likely to be stranded when the rungs in front of it move on. Leading with the front peg feels like progress and leaves a straggler that costs you the game — because you have not won until all ten are home.

And use the opponent's pegs. They are rungs too. The lanes down the middle of the star fill up with both colours, and a chain that alternates between your pegs and theirs is usually the longest one available. It is also the reason the middle of the board is worth contesting: an empty lane helps nobody, and a crowded one helps whoever looks at it hardest.

The computer here evaluates a position the only way that really works for this game: it adds up how far every peg still has to travel, for both sides, and prefers the move that shrinks its own total most while doing least for yours. That is why it will sometimes make a move that goes nowhere itself — it is placing a rung.

More games

More from ♟️ Board games vs computer:

• Nine Men's Morris — Place nine, form a mill, take one of theirs. Down to three pieces and you can fly.
• Four in a Row — Beat the computer and it thinks one move deeper next game. How long can the streak last?
• Reversi — Flip your opponent's discs to your colour. Take the corners — and beware the squares beside them.
• Checkers — Captures are compulsory — which is exactly how you set traps. Beat it and it thinks deeper next game.
• Dots and Boxes — The opening doesn't matter — the endgame is everything. Whoever runs out of safe moves first loses.

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