This week we played Halma, a game invented in 1883-1884 by an American surgeon called George Howard Monks. The name comes from the Greek work meaning to jump.

We played a four-player game, with each player having 13 pieces. The winner is the first player to move all their pieces from their home “camp” to the opposite “camp”. Movement is either by step or by jump. A step is from one square to an adjacent square in any direction. A jump can be over your own piece or your opponent’s piece, to an empty square beyond; multiple jumps are allowed; steps and jumps cannot be combined. We explained the strategy of building ladders so the children could move their pieces quickly across the board. We also showed them the trick of zigzagging along a straight line of pieces.

The game had not finished by the time our hour was up! This was not something I was expecting, as I had packed Chinese Chequers and Five Field Kono, other replacement games, in my bag. We had to call a halt to the game, giving our judgment on who had done well. One child had got six of their 13 pieces to the opposite camp, but still had a few pieces left in their own camp. Another child had fewer pieces in their opposite camp, but overall had got more of their pieces across the board, as well as setting up some good ladders and using the zigzagging trick. As we were packing up the children said they wanted to play this game again next time. This is something I have observed: if you ask them what their favourite game is they will often say it is the game they have just played. I’m not sure this is really true, but it does show the capacity of children to live in the present moment, something we could all benefit from trying.

This week at our adult’s club we played Chinese Chequers. This is not a game which can be traced back to Ancient China: it was invented in 1893 in Germany. It was originally called ‘Stern-Halma’ as a variation on the older American game of Halma. ‘Stern’ means ‘Star’ as the game board looks like a six-point star, and ‘Halma’ comes from the Greek word to ‘jump’. In 1928 a marketing scheme in the USA saw ‘Stern-Halma’ renamed as Chinese Checkers. In the UK we use the spelling Chequers.

We played a two-player game, although the game can be played by up to 6. The winner is the first player to move all their pieces from their home point to the opposite point of the star. Movement is either by step or by jump. A step is from one point to the next point along a line. A jump is along a line, and can be over your own pieces or your opponent’s pieces. Steps and jumps cannot be combined. The strategy is to build ladders so you can move your pieces quickly across the board. We also discovered a nice way of zigzagging along a straight line of pieces.

We followed this game with Five Field Kono, a lovely replacement game from Korea. As with Chinese Chequers the winner is the first player to move all their pieces from their side to the opposite side of the board.  There is no jumping over or capturing, just pure movement in space as each player moves one piece from an intersection to the next empty intersection. Players can move forwards and backwards, and will at some point have to move backwards when the other player blocks their path.

We had a few minutes left at the end, so we played Brainline, a 4 in a row game, and Picaria, a 3 in a row game.