Hex
Hex is a beautiful and elegant game first invented by Danish mathematician Piet Hein in 1942, who called it "Polygon." It was independently invented by famous mathematician John Nash (subject of A Beautiful Mind) when he was a graduate student at Princeton in 1948. It was called Nash, or sometimes John (because it was sometimes played on bathroom tiles.) In 1952 Parker Brothers marketed it under the name of Hex, and the name stuck.
Hex is admired by many Go players (or so I'm told). It is played on an NxN rhombus of hexagons, where both players pick two opposite sides each take turns putting stones down on the board to try to form a solid connected bridge to opposite sides. There is no standard size for a hex board. 13x13 or 14x14 is a typical size.
This is what it looks like:
The only way to block your opponent from making such a bridge is to make your own. Hex thus has the unusual property that winning the game is exactly the same as not losing it. This is a very useful concept in Hex strategy since if you unconditionally block your opponent from winning the game, you've won the game yourself.
Having the first move confers a huge advantage. Hex players typically use the Swap Rule, sometimes called the Pie Rule, to make the game more even.
Links
-
http://www.abstractgamesmagazine.com/hex.html (Basic Strategy + some interesting puzzles)
-
http://www.hexwiki.org Hex Wiki
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=HexWiki:About
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Special:Allpages
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Puzzles
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Computer_Hex
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Hex_theory
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Board_size
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Draw
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=History_of_Hex
-
http://www.hexwiki.org/index.php?title=Strategy strategy
-
- The source for much of the above information was
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~javhar/hex/, a good site for those who wish to learn more about Hex.
-
http://www.boardspace.net/ Realtime play against real opponents.
- Little Golem (and PlaySite??) feature Hex games over the web.
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(game) (Wikipedia article)
-
http://jhex.sourceforge.net/ java hex program, includes a computer opponent (network play should be possible)
-
http://www.mazeworks.com/hex7/ hex playing applet
-
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~hde/hex/hexfaq/ Hex IAQ (infreqently asked questions)
-
http://www.cs.newcastle.edu.au/~mihex/ MIHex: Machine Intelligence for Hex
-
http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/games/hex/ ICGA: Hex
-
http://six.retes.hu/ Six, a Hex playing program for Linux/Un*x systems running KDE
See also
- Connection Games
- Havannah a game, similar to hex
- Twixt another connection game
- Gonnect A go variant: Go+Hex=Gonnect