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:
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~javhar/hex/win-11.gif

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

  • Little Golem (and PlaySite??) feature Hex games over the web.



See also


This is a copy of the living page "Hex" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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