About LeapTale
LeapTale is a web version of Chinese Checkers — the classic hop-race whose real name is Sternhalma (it was invented in Germany in 1892; the “Chinese” name was a marketing choice, not an origin). You play on the real 121-hole six-point star, racing your ten pegs into the far point by stepping and hopping in long jump-chains.
It runs entirely on your device — no sign-in, no accounts, and nothing you do leaves this browser. Free to play and to learn.
The game reinforces spatial reasoning and route-planning (finding the longest jump-chain each turn is a small path-finding puzzle). Part of the Spark & Anvil learning portfolio.
Two rules for a race that can't get stuck
A peg left behind counts for you. If the other side leaves pegs in your goal point so you can't fill it, you still win once every hole there is full and at least one holds your own peg. Most printed rules say nothing about this “spoiling”; this is the most common house rule for it (another lets you swap places with the blocking peg).
A game can end in a draw. Two players at one device can agree a draw (tap twice). After 1,000 moves with no winner — 500 each, far longer than a real race — the game is a draw, and it is also a draw if the side to move has no move at all.
Each rule set's report card
How long is a race, and is it fair to whoever moves first? We did not guess: the engine played each rule set against itself 500 times and counted. A random player that moves pegs backward never gets home, so the players here pick at random from the moves that go forward or sideways, and never take a peg back out of the goal (if nothing else is left, any move will do). Random play is not how people play, so these numbers describe the rules, not players.
500 random-play games each, played to the rules above (a game with no winner after 1,000 moves is a draw). One move = one peg's step or whole hop chain. Fast-Track adds the long jump (a peg leaps another with the same number of empty holes on each side). White moves first on LeapTale’s boards. | Game | Finished | Typical length | Ends with a winner | First player wins (of games with a winner) | Choices per turn |
| Two players | 100% | 501 moves | 99.8% | 56% | 23.6 |
| Fast-Track | 100% | 346 moves | 100% | 51% | 25.7 |