Halma vs Computer

How to play Halma

Halma is the original "jump across the board" racing game, invented in 1883 by George Howard Monks, a surgeon at Harvard Medical School in Boston — its name is the Greek word for "leap". It became a worldwide craze in the 1880s and later inspired Chinese Checkers, which is really just Halma on a star-shaped board. Two armies start in opposite corner "camps" and race straight through each other: the first player to move every piece into the enemy camp wins. No piece is ever captured, so the whole game is about building jump "ladders" that fling your pieces across the board in a single turn. This version is the fast two-player variant on an 8×8 board with 10 pieces a side (classic Halma uses a 16×16 board with 19 pieces per player — identical rules, much longer games); the compact board keeps every match quick and phone-friendly. Play a friend on one screen, or challenge the computer at three difficulty levels and earn ranking points.

The goal

Halma is a pure race. Blue starts in the bottom-left camp and races towards the top-right; Amber starts top-right and races towards the bottom-left. The first player to occupy all ten squares of the OPPONENT'S starting camp with their own ten pieces wins immediately. Because nothing is ever captured, you can never knock your opponent back — the only way to win is to travel faster, and the way to travel fast is to jump.

Board and setup

The board is an 8×8 grid. Each camp is the triangle of ten squares hugging one corner (a row of 4, then 3, then 2, then the corner square) and is tinted in its owner's colour: blue in the bottom-left, amber in the top-right. Blue's ten pieces fill the blue camp, Amber's ten fill the amber camp, and Blue moves first. Each camp is exactly the target the other player must fill.

How pieces move

• Step: move one of your pieces to an adjacent EMPTY square in any of the 8 directions — up, down, left, right or diagonally. A step ends your turn.
• Jump: a piece may hop over ANY adjacent piece — your own or your opponent's — landing on the empty square directly beyond it, again in any of the 8 directions. The jumped piece is only a springboard; it does not matter whose it is.
• Chain jumps: after one jump the same piece may keep jumping over other pieces, changing direction freely, for as long as legal hops exist — and you may stop on any landing square along the way. When you select a piece, the game shows every square the full chain can reach.
• Nothing is ever captured. Jumped pieces stay exactly where they are — this is the key difference from checkers. Both players happily use each other's pieces as bridges, and all twenty pieces stay on the board for the whole game.
• Camp rule (anti-stalling): a move may never END inside your own camp unless the piece started the move there — once a piece has left home it can never settle back home (a jump chain may still pass through). A piece still inside your camp must aim to leave: while it has any move that gets out, its moves that stay inside are illegal; only a piece with no way out may reposition within the camp.
• No move is ever forced. On your turn you may move any one of your pieces, step or jump, forwards, sideways or even backwards — only the camp rule above limits where a move may finish.

Winning

You win the moment all ten of your pieces occupy the ten squares of the enemy camp. Plan your arrivals: fill the deep corner squares first, or your own pieces will block the doorway and the last stragglers will crawl in one step at a time. In the two-player game you can use Undo to take back moves; in the extremely rare case that a player has no legal move at all, that player loses.

Playing the computer (ranked)

In "Halma vs Computer" you choose your colour and one of three levels. Easy plays loosely and makes deliberate mistakes, so beginners can win. Normal looks ahead and punishes lazy moves. Expert searches deeper, builds long jump ladders and rarely wastes a turn. The computer evaluates positions by how far each army still has to travel, so it plays the same racing game you do — entirely on your device, fully offline. Beat it to earn ranking points: Easy +10, Normal +30, Expert +100. Sign in and your best score appears on the leaderboard.

Strategy tips

• Build ladders. A line of pieces spaced one square apart is a highway: a piece at the back can hop the whole row in a single turn. Strong Halma play is mostly about laying ladders in front of your army and riding them — a good chain can cross half the board at once.
• Move as a group. Pieces travel fast only where there are pieces to jump over, so keep your army connected. A lone straggler left at the back has no bridges and must crawl square by square — games are usually lost by the last two or three pieces, not the first.
• Use your opponent's pieces. Jumps work over any piece, so the crowded middle of the board is full of free springboards — the fastest routes usually run straight through the enemy army. Just remember the road works both ways: every ladder you build is open to your opponent too.
• Leave home early and in the right order. The camp rule forces pieces out when they can go, and pieces buried in the corner need the most time — get the back-corner piece moving before the doorway clogs up.
• Think about both ends of the race. Before making a flashy jump, check what springboards it leaves behind for your opponent, and plan the order your pieces enter the target camp — filling the entrance squares first can lock your own last pieces out.

Frequently asked questions