igGameCenter :: Halma

Halma

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Overview

Halma (meaning "jump" in Greek) is a two-player abstract board game invented in 1883 (or 1884) by George Howard Monks.

Board
Objective
Play
End of Game

Board

The original Halma is played on a 16x16 checkerboard but other sizes can be used too. The igGameCenter uses 10x10 checkerboard.

Each player has 15 checkers (dark and light) located in the opposite corners of the board. The areas where the checkers are placed are called "houses".

Objective

The goal of the Halma is to move all own checkers from the own house to the opponent's one.

Play

Players move alternatively one checker per turn, starting from the player with the light checkers.

There are two variants of moving a checker:

A checker can move to any adjacent unoccupied cell horizontally,vertically or diagonally. The turn is passed to the opponent right after this kind of move.
A checker can jump over another checker (either player's or opponent's) standing on an adjacent cell if there is an empty cell in the same direction right after it. If the same checker can continue jumping over other checkers it can do so (but doesn't have to).

End of Game

When a player makes a move that results in all his checkers being located in the opponent's house the player wins.

One exclusion is made to this rule for ballancing the game. Since the player with light checkers has an advantage of the first move the dark player has one extra turn after the light player moves all his checkers to the dark house. If the dark player succeeds in moving all his checkers into the light house using the extra turn then the game ends up with a draw.

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