Koen De Turck <Koen.DeTurck at rug.ac.be>  wrote...

>Maybe I should look at the chinese checkers demo too.
>(By the way, does anyone happen to have the rules of that game ? )

I don't know officially, but the way I have always understood it is...

1.  Someone starts (I don't know how you are supposed to select this -- I would guess the one who lost last time), and play continues clockwise among the players.  The winner is the first person to get all of his pieces into the (10) home positions directly across form his starting home triangle.

2.  A move consists of making either a simple move or a jump with any one of your pieces.

3.  In a simple move you move one of your pieces to any adjacent (one of the 6 nearest) cell that is unoccupied.

4.  To make a jump, one of the adjacent cells must be occupied (it doesn't matter by whom), and the cell immediately beyond in that direction must be unoccupied.  You move your piece over the occupied cell to the unoccupied cell.  That is one leg of a jump.  A jump may be extended to a sequence of any number of legs, each in any direction.

I'm not sure if it's a rule, but I've played with people who say you can't use cells that are in any home traingle other than your starting or ending home.

A very different (and wild) game is to allow any jump that is in-line and symmetric.  In other words, if you drew a line 30 degrees off the forward axis, and the cells along that line were (x u u o o u u u ...), (x = where you are, u = unoccupied, o = occupied), then you could jump to the 7th cell (the last in my list), because you would be passing over the symmetric pattern (u u o o u u).  That, of course, is just one leg, of a jump.  This one is good with beer ;-).

Hope this helps

	- Dan