| Object: connect your sides of the board with a continuous chain of your men.
Two players, Black and White, take turns placing a piece on any free hexagon.
Pie rule: White can - on his first move only - drop on Black's first man,
which will be removed and White's man will appear on the mirrored position,
thus effectively swapping sides. Each player's color doesn't change, though.
You win when a unbroken chain of your pieces connect your sides of the board.
Without the pie rule the first player could always force a win (with perfect play).
The pie rule gets his name from the divide and choose method of ensuring
fairness in the division of pie between two people; one person cuts a pie
in half, then the other person chooses which half to eat.
Translated to a game: after the first move is made, the second player can
either choose to switch sides (accepting that move as his first) or continue
as the second player.
Translated to this implementation (see above):
Players don't technically switch sides, but the effect is the same.
In theory the pie rule ensures that the second player has a winning strategy,
but in practice the first player can choose a hex for which no winning strategy
is known.
A draw is impossible in this game.
Hex is traditionally played on an 11x11 board.
This implementation also offers the smaller 7x7 board.
Each size is available in a couple of different board formats.
Hex was discovered independently by both Piet Hein and John Nash.
This implementation uses the "Axiom" Meta-game engine.
Jeff Roy created a zrf-only implementation in July 2000.
Please note:
When a game has ended, ZoG will display a dialog that announces the correct
outcome of a game. However, after that dialog is dismissed, another extraneous
dialog pops up that always calls it a stalemate.
This dialog is not a serious problem, it's just an annoyance - simply ignore it. |
