Halma

Halma

Board with "camps" marked for 2 and 4 players
Years active	1883/84 to present
Genre(s)	Board game Abstract strategy game
Players	2 or 4
Setup time	~1 minute
Playing time	10 minutes to 1 or more hours
Random chance	None
Skill(s) required	Strategy, tactics

Halma (from the Greek word ἅλμα meaning "jump") is a strategy board game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, an American thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. His inspiration was the English game Hoppity which was devised in 1854.^[1]

The gameboard is checkered and divided into 16×16 squares. Pieces may be small checkers or counters, or wooden or plastic cones or men resembling small chess pawns.^[2] Piece colors are typically black and white for two-player games, and various colors or other distinction in games for four players.

Overview

The game is played by two or four players seated at opposing corners of the board. The goal is to transfer all of one's pieces from one's own camp into the camp in the opposing corner. On each turn, a player either moves a single piece to an adjacent open square, or jumps over one or more pieces in sequence.

Game rules

Setup

Setup for two players

Setup for four players (when played in teams, teammates sit in opposite corners)

• The board consists of a grid of 16×16 squares.
• Squares are adjacent horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
• A game may be played by two or four players.
• Each player's camp consists of a cluster of adjacent squares in one corner of the board. These camps are delineated on the board.
  • For two-player games, each player's camp is a cluster of 19 squares. The camps are in opposite corners.
  • For four-player games, each player's camp is a cluster of 13 squares. Each of the four corners of the board is a camp.
• Each player has a set of pieces in a distinct color, of the same number as squares in each camp.
• The board starts with all the squares of each player's camp occupied by a piece of that player's color.

Objective

The winning objective is to be the first player to race all one's pieces into the opposing camp—the camp diagonally opposite one's own. For four-player games played in teams, the winner is the first team to race both sets of pieces into opposing camps.

Play sequence

Simple wooden pawn-style playing pieces, often called "Halma pawns"

• Players randomly determine who will move first.
• Pieces can move in eight possible directions (orthogonally and diagonally).
• Each player's turn consists of moving a single piece of one's own color in one of the following plays:
  • One move to an empty square:
    • Place the piece in an empty adjacent square.
    • This move ends the play.
  • One or more jumps over adjacent pieces:
    • An adjacent piece of any color can be jumped if there is an adjacent empty square on the directly opposite side of that piece.
    • Place the piece in the empty square on the opposite side of the jumped piece.
    • The piece which was jumped over is unaffected and remains on the board.
    • After any jump, one may make further jumps using the same piece, or end the play.
• Once a piece has reached the opposing camp, a play cannot result in that piece leaving that camp.
• If the current play results in having every square of the opposing camp occupied by one's own pieces, the acting player wins.
• Otherwise, play proceeds clockwise around the board.

Comparison to other games

• The mechanic of jumping pieces is reminiscent of draughts (checkers) but differs in that no opposing pieces are ever captured or otherwise withdrawn from the board nor is jumping compulsory.
• Chinese checkers, a variant of Halma, was originally published in 1892 as Stern-Halma (German for "Star Halma") and later renamed upon marketing to the United States to appear more exotic. The name is misleading, since the game has no historical connection with China, nor is it a checkers game.

Variations

There are also 8×8 and 10×10 board variations, either of which is adequate for two players and they have 10 and 15 pieces per player, respectively. There are various on-line versions on the internet, usually for two-player, turn based play.

Some sites implement a rule variation stating that a player automatically loses if they still have a piece in their start region after a certain number of moves (typically 30 for the 8×8 game, 50 for the 10×10 game). Fast-advancing players occasionally attempt to blockade an opposing piece, but this tactic can backfire if the other player is aware of it. In non-electronic versions, the number of moves is not normally counted.

Basic strategy and tactics

In comparison with many board games, Halma has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning (before opposing pieces come into contact) is usually a set-piece battle, with players setting up their favoured openings. The middle (when opposing pieces are blocking or jumping each other) is usually characterised by opportunistic play; the player with the most patience to check the whole board for opportunities, including those gained by moving backwards in order to move forwards, will gain an advantage. Players should also set up for the endgame (when opposing pieces have passed one another and must run for home), avoiding stragglers.

As with most board games, early control of the centre is a key tactic, as it provides additional mobility. Pieces can form a two-layer blocking wall, deflecting the opponent from the centre and forcing them into a longer trajectory; however, if the opponent builds an adjacent wall, then the first player to disband his wall usually suffers a strategic disadvantage.

It is important to understand that paired pieces move faster than single pieces in the endgame. This means that a player with a pair of "leapfrogging" pieces has an advantage over a player with two individual stragglers.

The larger boards have more strategic combinations available than the smaller boards, and the four player game offers more tactical intrigue than the two player game.

References to Halma in literature

1890 advertisement

• In E.M. Forster's Maurice the main character plays halma upon returning home from boarding school.
• In Forster's The Longest Journey, Rickie Elliot "would play Halma against himself" during his lonely childhood.
• The game appears in Billy Wilder's 1944 classic film Double Indemnity.
• Talking halma pieces featured in a Rupert the Bear story.
• Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited has Julia Flyte playing Halma with Nanny.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy contains a scene during which the shipboard computer offers a game of halma.
• The television series The Good Life features a scene (in "The Early Birds", the first episode of Season 3) in which the characters go to bed early one night and take Halma to entertain themselves until they fall asleep.
• In E. Nesbit's The Magic City, the land of Somnolentia is inhabited by Halma people.
• In Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods and New Treasure Seekers, Halma is described as "a beastly game".^[3]
• M.V. Hughes' autobiography A London Home in the 1890s repeatedly refers to halma as an alternative to chess for relaxation, though the actual playing is never described.
• In Agatha Christie (writing as Mary Westmacott)'s Absent in the Spring, Joan Scudamore is stranded at a Rest House in Tell Abu Hamid for days and wishes for a game of Halma to pass the time.
• In P.G. Wodehouse's story The Amazing Hat Mystery, a character in hospital with a broken leg is playing halma with his nurse.
• In Saki's short story "Clovis on Parental Responsibilities," Mrs. Eggelby mentions this board game together with draughts; it is also mentioned in "Reginald's Christmas Revels."
• Paul Jennings described the hilarious results of his attempt to decipher the rules of the game from a set of instructions in German in his article "How to Spiel Halma."
• In Monica Dickens's 1946 novel The Happy Prisoner, Evelyn plays halma with her cousin Oliver North.
• In Marie Buchanan's 1972 novel "Anima", Young Livia whiles her time away at Halma before she joins the rest of the party for a seance.
• In Bill James's The Lolita Man (1986), Colin Harpur is told to go home and 'play halma' with his wife Megan.
• In Constance Savery's book Enemy Brothers, the game is bought by an Thomas for Max/Tony because Thomas has heard that all Germans play halma and it is practically a national pastime.
• In Sarah Water's 2009 novel "Little Stranger," (which takes place shortly after World War II) the game is mentioned as one of two board games (the other is draughts) played by Mrs. Ayres and the servant girl, Betty.
• In Alberta Alone by Cora Sandel, Alberta's five-year-old son and his father are playing Halma.
• In Fridjof Nansen's book "Farthest North."
• In Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, Mr Nutt asks if football is a game "like spillikins or halma or Thud?"
• In Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic, Carroll refers to it as "...the new Game..." in the introduction.
• Eleanor Farjeon talks about playing Halma in her autobiography A Nursery in the Nineties, and about using black, white and red Halma pieces to enact a Christmas Eve ritual game in which imaginary characters try to climb a mountain made of Anchor Stone Blocks.
• A reference to a halma board in Susan Hill's The Woman in Black.
• Leopold Bloom mentions this game in as an example of a Parlour Game in the Ithaca chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses
• In Whimpering in the Rhododendrons, edited by Arthur Marshall, one of the poems made up by the prep school boys mentions halma as one of the "female" entertainments.

See also

• Ugolki

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

• Rules for the Game of Halma, Copyright 1938 by Parker Brothers, Inc. Salem, Mass., New York, Chicago and London
• igGameCenter play Halma online via browser or iGoogle gadget
• Halma at BoardGameGeek