TABLETOP TIME MACHINE
Like Reversi, a successful Victorian game that became more successful later under the name Othello, Halma was a successful Victorian game that became more successful later in a further evolved form under the name Chinese Checkers. Unlike Reversi/Othello and the vast majority of abstract games (Chess, Draughts, Backgammon, Go, etc), most of which are essentially two- handers, Halma was initially designed for two or four players, and by up to six in its reincarnationas Chinese Checkers.
Brief description first: Halma is played on a grid of 16x16 squares on which two players each place 19 pawns of their own colour in diagonally opposite corners, or four place 13 each on eachcorner. The aim is to get all your pieces into the correspondingly opposite diagonal corner in accordance with these simple rules of play: at each turn you can either move a pawn to any orthogonally or diagonally adjacent square (like a Chess king), or jump over an adjacent pawn of any colour to the corresponding square on its other side – like jumping a pawn at Draughts, but without capturing it. (The name Halma is Greek for ‘jump’.) You can enchain as many simple or jumping moves in the same turn as you can and wish, but can’t combine simple moves with jumps in one turn. Obviously, jumping moves get you further quicker, so you will try to constructladders or chains of pawns on alternating squares in order to speed things up and make similar use of opposing ladders while avoiding the danger of an opponent making use of yours.
‘When playing Halma by the original rules’, writes Damian Walker, ‘it is possible to ruin the game for the opponents by adopting a spoiling strategy. The game’s designers in the 1880s didn’t think it necessary among civilised people to add rules against unsportsmanlike play. In fact, they probably didn’t even consider the possibility of it happening. But modern concerns and tournament play have induced people in recent years to recognise the spoiling strategy and to guard against it.
Halma was invented by an American surgeon, Howard C Monks, in 1882-3 after returning from England, where much the same game had previously appeared as early as 1854 under the name Hoppity. In 1892 the German company Ravensburger published a version playable by up to six under the name Sternhalma (Star Halma), which later appear in America and the UK as Chinese Checkers. As I wrote elsewhere, its subsequent success over ‘Square Halma’ was due partly to its more attractive appearance, partly to its catchier title, and perhaps largely because more players could participate. Film buffs might like to spot its uncredited appearance in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944).
Other varieties and spin-offs of Halma were not slow to emerge. Rakado is played by two from opposite sides of a Halma board, Salta on a 10x10 (‘continental’) draughtboard, while a more Spartan version called Grasshopper is played on an 8x8 board with 10 pawns in each of the opposite corners.
Halma set-up: Black and White each occupy 19 corner squares if two play, but only 13 (omitting the inner six) if four play. symmetrical pattern with the median number in the middle. Here are seven
different possibilities.
You can see why Chinese Checkers was originally called ‘Star Chess’.
Further details on spoiling strategy at:
http://www.cyningstan. com/post/922/ unspoiling-halma
David Parlett is a games inventor and historian, author of The Oxford History of Card Games and its sequel on board games, and a visiting professor of games design at the University of Suffolk.