Hop and chain your pegs across the six-pointed star and be first to fill the home point on the far side.
Each side starts with ten pegs clustered in one point of the star board. The goal is to move every one of your pegs all the way across to the opposite point. On your turn you either step a peg into an adjacent empty hole or jump it over a single neighbouring peg into the empty hole beyond, and jumps can chain into long hops across the board. First side to completely fill the far home point wins.
The game is neither Chinese nor checkers. It was invented in Germany in 1892 under the name Stern-Halma — Stern meaning "star", for the board shape that distinguishes it from the square board of its parent, Halma.
The familiar name was an American marketing decision. Bill and Jack Pressman attached "Chinese checkers" to their edition in 1928, having first sold it as Hop Ching checkers; the exoticism was a sales tactic, and it stuck so thoroughly that it displaced the real name everywhere.
In China itself the game is called tiaoqi, 跳棋 — "jump game" — a name that describes what happens rather than where it came from. Japan plays a variant under the name diamond game, with slightly different rules.
Chinese Checkers is a classic hop-and-jump strategy game played on a star-shaped board, popular worldwide for over a century. This is an original, free browser version with AI difficulty levels, local two-player, and online play, no download or sign-up required.