What is Super Chinese Checkers?
Super Chinese Checkers, also called fast-paced Chinese Checkers, keeps the board, the pieces and the goal of the standard game and changes only how far a hop can reach. In the standard game you hop over a piece in a neighbouring hole into the empty hole directly behind it. Here the piece you hop over may be any distance away along one of the six lines, as long as every hole between you and it is empty. You land the same distance beyond it, and the holes on that side, the landing hole included, must be empty too.
For example, with two empty holes between your piece and the piece you hop over, you land leaving exactly two empty holes behind the jumped piece. A hop never passes over two pieces. A hop over a neighbouring piece is still a hop, so every standard move stays legal.
Hops still chain: after each hop you may hop again from where you landed, and stop whenever you like. A lone piece in the middle of an empty line becomes a springboard that can carry a piece across half the board, so games are much shorter, and lining up such springboards for yourself while leaving none for your opponents becomes the heart of the strategy. In the table setup this rule is the Long Jump option, and it can be combined with any number of players and the other options.
Rule changes
| Rule | Standard Chinese Checkers | Super Chinese Checkers |
|---|---|---|
| Hops | Standard Chinese CheckersHop over a piece of any colour in a neighbouring hole. | Super Chinese CheckersHop over a piece of any colour at any distance along a line, as long as every hole between you and it is empty. |
| Landing hole | Standard Chinese CheckersThe empty hole directly behind the jumped piece. | Super Chinese CheckersAs far beyond the jumped piece as you started before it. The landing hole and every hole on the way to it must be empty, so a hop never passes over two pieces. |
| Chains of hops | Standard Chinese CheckersAny number of hops in one turn, stopping after any of them. | Super Chinese CheckersThe same, with long and short hops mixed freely in one chain. |
| Steps | Standard Chinese CheckersInstead of hopping, step one hole to an empty neighbour. A turn is a step or a chain of hops, never both. | Super Chinese CheckersThe same. |
| How to win | Standard Chinese CheckersBe the first to fill the opposite point of the star with your pieces. | Super Chinese CheckersThe same. |
History
The long-hop rule is described in R. Wayne Schmittberger's book New Rules for Classic Games (1992), which presents it as a version popular in France. It is known in English as fast-paced or Super Chinese Checkers. No inventor or date of origin is recorded for it.
The rule belongs to a family of games that has always been about hopping. Chinese Checkers itself was published in Germany in 1892 as Stern-Halma, a star-shaped version of Halma, the square-board game invented in the 1880s by George H. Monks. Its English name came later, as a marketing idea in the United States: the game has nothing to do with China and is not a form of checkers.