See also Havannah, Cheshire

Havannah, Cheshire

Havannah near Congleton in Cheshire used to be known as 'the deserted village'.It was established in 1762 to commemorate the British capture of Havana in Cuba.Cigars were made there.-Links:*...

Havannah is an abstract strategy board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 invented by Christian Freeling

Christian Freeling

Christian Freeling is a Dutch game designer and inventor of various chess variants, notably Grand chess, invented in 1984.Other game inventions by Freeling include:...

. It is played on a base-10 hexagonal board, ten hexes (cells) to a side. The depicted board is base-8, a good size for beginners.
Havannah belongs to the family of games commonly called connection game

Connection game

A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more goals, completing a closed loop, or connecting all of one's pieces so they are adjacent to each other....

s; its relatives include Hex and TwixT

TwixT

TwixT is a two-player abstract strategy game invented by Alex Randolph. It is a member of the connection game family, along with games such as Hex, Havannah, Y, PÜNCT and *Star...

.

The game was published for a period of time in Germany by Ravensburger

Ravensburger

Ravensburger Spieleverlag GmbH is a German game company. It is a leader in the European puzzle market.-History:The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier with seat in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began publishing in 1883 with his first author contract...

.

Rules

One player plays as Black; the other plays as White. White starts, after which moves alternate. The rules are as follows:

• Each player places one stone of their color on the board per turn.
• Stones are never moved, captured, or otherwise changed.
• A player wins when they complete one of three different structures from unbroken lines, or paths, of connected stones, all of their colour:
  • A ring is a loop around one or more cells (no matter whether the encircled cells are occupied or empty);
  • A bridge, which connects any two of the six corner cells of the board; or
  • A fork, which connects any three edges of the board; corner points are not considered parts of an edge.

An example of all three winning combinations is shown at right. The structure in the centre of the board is a ring; the structure on the left-hand side is a fork; the structure on the right-hand side is a bridge.

Praxis

While draws are technically possible, in practice they are extremely rare.
Tactics are much easier to master than strategy, and differences in playing level are considerable.

Although computers can play some abstract strategy games better than any human, the best Havannah-playing software to date plays quite weakly compared to human experts. In 2002 Freeling offered a prize of 1000 euros, available through 2012, for any computer program that could beat him in even one game of a ten-game match.

External links

• Official site at mindsports.nl
• Havannah article on Sensei's Library
  Sensei's Library
  Sensei's Library is an internet website and wiki, dedicated to articles about, and discussion of, the game of Go. It is one of the largest and most active wikis outside of the Wikipedia project on the internet. Sensei's Library was started in September 2000, by the Go players Morten Pahle and Arno...
  
  .
• Play Havannah on Little Golem turn-based server.
• Play Havannah on igGameCenter.
• Play Havannah on Richard Rognlie's Play-By-eMail Server.
• Download Movannah from Mo Firouz's website.
• Download GoRilla a SGF viewer for Havannah and other games.