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Isnt this game essentially solved, though? It seems like whoever has the first piece on the board is almost certainly going to win.

Thank you for having me Florian! I'm sure you'll get soon pretty good :) see you at the MSO!

If you wanna learn more about Hive you can check Francesco's channel: www.youtube.com/@FrascoAdAbstra

For me, between Xiangqi and Shogi, it is undeniable that both board games are addictive and fun to play, just like Western chess. I have a fondness for chess because it was the first board game I learned to play. Shogi I find very fun to learn and also very addictive. Xiangqi I believe is equally complex as Shogi and much more addictive (in my opinion).

Thanks for this series!

I started with chess and then many years later took up shogi and xiangqi. I know a lot of people like to have 'favorites' but for me choosing between shogi and xiangi is like choosing between pizza and cake, or Beethoven and Mozart. I might also add a third game to consider- *Janggi* or Korean chess. It is derived from Xiangqi but has enough differences to make it a distinctly different game. It is much easier to defend in Janggi and games tend to be considerably longer than Xiangqi. As a western chess player I felt more at home in Janggi than the others. I have also tried Burmese chess and Thai chess but I don't think think they are quite as good. But I don't mean that in a condescending way, I mean that only in comparison to shogi , xiangqi and janggi they are not as good. But if chess had never been invented and one day somebody came up with the idea for Burmese or Thai chess they would likely be a big global sensation.

Nice video! I loved Raymond Smullyan book, now I am deep in this kind of chess problem, and your video was super helpful!

Heights of the pieces: B3=1, B4=1, D3=1, E1=2.

Very nice explanation! Slither is my second favourite game on littlegolem :D By the way, 12:20 this is very similar to the concept of minimaxing in hex.

Can Hex be played on a square grid? (i.e. each cell is connected to 8 other cells insted of 6) Would it break the game somehow?

And thank you for the video!

Sorry Florian but that is NOT the advanced rule. The real advanced rule was not implemented on iggc because it was more complicated than Luis wanted to deal with. If you consult the pdf, a stone must be in an orthogonal group of BOTH colors if you want to move it . The reason is you could add another stone touching the first one and walk them like a pair of shoes up to the center, so it was quickly abandoned. Please put this in the video description, thanks!

Are you saying Slither is an easier game than Blokus?

I came up with this opening rule for Gomoku: Game starts with one black stone at the center and one white stone next to it. Player 1 places a black stone. Player 2 chooses to play as black or white. What do you think?

Cool!

Thank you for this, from the designer!

Oware: à la 13ème t'aurais dû jouer D, car tu peux pas espérer là de capturer plus de 4 ;-)

Sorry for this massive blunder at move 6 in Blokus game, does not make any sense, almost everything was winning by like 10 points, like playing the V instead at the same place, or even better probably just playing the Z on top. Cannot explain my own move because I don't understand it 😆

I started as a weak chess player, I practise shogi a lot and a little bit of xiangqi. I much prefer shogi and I think I am a better chess player (except for pawn finales) now that I have practised shogi.

The number one channel for connect 6. Super interesting and lots to learn here. Thank you.

Interesting game. A tie of this game is obviously impossible.

Really great video and superb explaination of Gomoku. It certainly is a great game - Renju too - but it's very hard to transition from the beginner, to understanding openings and swap 2. There seems to be very little literature or online content in this area. Ive been certainly put off in the past into delving deeper into the game as the gap online between people playing freestyle and swap 2 is so vast one stands no chance against someone of any experience.

I'm starting to change my mind about hex, thanks to your channel. I think I've become rather addicted🧩 Thanks so much for these videos.

Interessante la tier list! Tu placerais selon les criteres de ta tier list - Battle sheep - Hey that's my fish - Stratego - Kamisado - Patchwork (abstrait je crois?)

Gonnect looks really interesting. I don't suppose that's an AI so some of us mere mortals can practice? Nice videos. Very instructive and interesting. I like how you say you've never played a game and promptly play at a level most of us would need a year of practice 😅

I had underestimated this game. Seeing some high level play is refreshing

I'have created some years ago a similar problem, certainly more difficult than this one...

One thing that I found quite interesting about your interpretation of the games is that you said that Shogi is more tactical than Chess and Xiangqi is more strategic than Chess. Most people would argue the exact opposite for the two games. Shogi has much slower-moving pieces, and at higher-level play, the game becomes extremely positional. Xiangqi on the other hand has no real concept of pawn structures, and every piece is poised to attack from the very beginning, so it ends up being much more aggressive and tactical. People say that Xiangqi starts right in the midgame.

"PromoSM"

Can't we just play c5 and e3 in a single move, without the split moves using the two threats in the north and west ? Is there some kind of defence in that case ?

The first move (B1-B2) is immediate to find as it's the only defense. It is also clear that white has the advantage. However analyzing from that position and determining that everything wins by one move is outside of my analysis capability if I don't move the pieces.

Good video

Very interesting video, and interesting considerations on these two games from a chessplayer.

Is a tie possible in havannah?

Interesting discussion (-: It doesn't change the idea, but I think the best solution to puzzle 2 starts with a1b1: the ejection is achieved one move earlier (6 black moves rather than 7).

bonjour peux tu mettre en ligne la partie annotée et surtout l ouverture stp ? de quel site s agit t il ? apparemment c est pas LG

Great video, merci Florian! Couple of comments: 1) If you want to take up Shogi or Xiangqi regularly, even just casually, do NOT learn the pieces with Western symbols like in this video! The problem is that all tournaments, published materials and many websites will not support these symbols. Take 20-60 minutes (that is all it takes) to learn the Chinese/Japanese symbols. You will be rewarded by being able to access the bulk of published materials out there and live tournaments. The rest of the comments apply to Xiangqi 2) The central 9-square zone in which the king (or "General") is trapped is called "Castle" rather than "Palace". I've also seen this translated as "Fortress", but "Castle" is the most common. 3) The two pieces in the castle with the king are called "Advisors" (not "Dwarves"). In notation (including this video) when this piece moves, it is given the letter "A" for Advisor". Some translations call this piece "Mandarin", but prefer "Advisor". "Mandarin" is old English for "Advisor" or "Councillor". 4) The elephant can be blocked if a piece is in the path of the 2-step diagonal move. Any piece which blocks the elephant's move is said (in Chinese) to be "in the eye of the elephant" (a beautiful phrase) 5) The king's don't "act like rooks to the other king", which is slightly ambiguous. The rule is usually stated as "the kings cannot face each other on an open file", which is simpler. Florian makes a nice summary of the Xiangqi rules, but misses two vital rules: 6) 3-fold repetition does not lead to an automatic draw (like in Western Chess). It is sometimes illegal! When a stronger piece attacks a weaker piece, this is called "chasing" in Chinese. And "perpetual chasing" is NOT allowed. The most common scenario where this applies is when a piece like the rook attacks (or "checks") the king. In Western chess, perpetual check is a draw, but in Xiangqi the 3rd check is disallowed. In serious tournaments, you may actually lose the game immediately if you check for a 3rd time in-a-row. In tournaments with non-Chinese players, you will usually be given a warning by the arbiter (like making an illegal move), and allowed to redo the move. But "perpetual chasing" also applies if a rook attacks a weaker piece like a cannon or promoted pawn, or even if two rooks attack a piece. This is by far the most complicated Xiangqi rule. It is simplest to start by just thinking "perpetual check is not allowed" and forget about rarer perpetual chase scenarios for now. 7) Florian misses a really vital rule in Xiangqi - there is no stalemate! If the opponent cannot move, the player who cannot move loses. This is a common way to end a a game of Xiangqi. Nice video, Florian. I agree with your comment that Xiangqi is more similar to Western chess than Shogi. I highly recommend this wonderful game. This comment is from Alain Dekker who is a Pentamind World Champion (2004) and has played as a non-Chinese/non-Vietnamese in two Xiangqi World Championships (I was crushed by the strong Chinese GMs, of course!)

How did you not play the best abstract game (hive)?

Classic Boyer-Moor majority vote algorithm: step 1: Initialize a candidate and a counter to zero. step 2: Iterate through each element in the array. If the counter is zero, set the current element as the candidate. If the current element is the candidate, increment the counter, otherwise decrement it. At the end of the loop, the candidate is the majority element. (we may need to do a second pass to confirm that the candidate does indeed appear more than n/2 times but that's just to be thourough) pseudo code would look like: function findMajorityElement(nums): candidate = None count = 0 for num in nums: if count == 0: candidate = num if num == candidate: count += 1 else: count -= 1 return candidate In the algorithm, the "extra space" is always constant, as it has space for "candidate" and "count", so the answer would be just 2 cells

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