The unused triangles can either be filled with the unused marbles (so those positions are out of play) or left open for use in the game if desired. A three-player game has the players start in the triangles which are equidistant from one another. If there are only four players, the players will begin in two pairs of opposing triangles, and likewise, a game of only two players should be played from their respective opposing triangles.
The number of marbles starting on the board depends on the number of players, for a full six-player game all marbles and triangles are used. “Life is more fun if you play games.” - Roald Dahl It’s possible that the game was introduced into Asia and China at one point, where it then became known by Americans as a Chinese board game. There is actually little information about the origin of the term Chinese checkers. You can either use single-step moves that jump one marble to an immediately adjacent space or moves that jump over other marbles. The goal of the game is to be the first to collect all of one’s pieces in the corner across from one’s starting corner. The board game is laid out in a six-pointed star formation, with each of the points of the star containing marbles that function as the player’s pieces. The game can be played with two, three, four, or six players. The game that is frequently referred to as Chinese checkers, is actually a board game that likely originated in Germany, where it was called “Sternhalma”. Photo: By Hephaestos at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, Some of the various solutions can be seen here. The world record solution to the peg solitaire or marble solitaire game consists of only 18 moves, and it was done by E.
There isn’t a solution to the European-style board if the starting hole is in the center if only orthogonal moves can be made. The English board has three rows and three columns arrayed in a cross formation while the European board has all of these rows and one more marble position is added in each of the four corners. There are a variety of different layouts to the board. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” - Michael Jordan This is because without a specific strategy you can employ removing all the marbles except one is quite difficult. Winning the game, or solving the puzzle, can be rather hard. There are 76 possible jumps or moves in total. You can only make two possible jobs from the edges of the board, and one jump from the middle rows of the outside edges. If a marble is in the middle of the board, you can jump it in any direction you want. The marbles may only be jumped horizontally or vertically, not diagonally. 32 of the pegs or holes are filled with marbles, and jumping one marble over the other removes that marble from play. The board game has 33 holes arrayed in a cross formation. A French engraving of Princess de Soubise seems to show her playing the game, and the engraving seems to date back to 1697, suggesting that the game may have been invented sometime in the late 1600s. (Incidentally, the card game Solitaire is known as Patience in the UK). The board starts full of marbles except for one spot in the center, and the objective is to remove all the marbles by jumping them over one another until there is only one marble remaining in the center. Peg or marble solitaire, is a game probably invented in France and it involves the moving of marbles or pegs around a board with small holes.
Photo: Annielogue via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0 The European variant of the Solitaire board.