Havannah Tutor
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About
Basic Tactics
Strategy
Games
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The Rules of
Havannah
Havannah belongs to the connection family. There are two players,
white and black.
The board can be seen in the diagram below.
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The game starts on an empty board.
Players move in turn to place one stone on an empty point. White moves first.
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The game is won by the first player to complete a ring or a
bridge or a fork. All of these are chains:
closed connections of one color.
- A ring is a chain around at least one point.
- A bridge is a chain linking two corners.
- A fork is a chain linking three sides.
Corners do not belong to either side.
That's it. In his New Rules for Classic Games (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
New York; ISBN 0-471-53621-0), Wayne Schmittberger states that a ring should surround at least
one vacant point. This is not the case: the point may be occupied by either player.
The diagram shows the shortest chains to satisfy the definitions: six stones for a ring,
10 for a bridge and 12 for a fork. They hardly ever materialize like this, though in
so called running games they may come a long way.
Note again the point inside the ring: it doesn't matter whether or by whom it is
occupied, nor does it matter in general what is connected to a chain, as long as it satisfies
one of the definitions. Note also that a corner, though not belonging to either side, may
form a connection between them.
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