Abstract strategy game

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An abstract strategy game is a board game with perfect information, no chance, and (usually) two players or teams. Many of the world's classic board games, including checkers, chess, go, and mancala, fit into this category. Play is sometimes said to resemble a series of puzzles the players pose to each other.

1 What counts as an abstract strategy game?
2 Favorite abstract strategy games
3 List of abstract strategy games
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] What counts as an abstract strategy game?

A purist's definition of an abstract strategy game requires that it cannot have random elements or hidden information. In practice, however, many games are commonly classed as abstract strategy games which do not strictly meet these criteria. Games such as Backgammon, Octiles, Can't Stop, Sequence and Mentalis have all been described as "abstract strategy" at some point or another, despite having a luck or bluffing element. A smaller category of non-perfect abstract strategy games manage to incorporate hidden information without using any random elements. The best known example here is Stratego. The pragmatic definition seems to be that if a game is strategic and is abstract (as opposed to being a simulation), the term "abstract strategy" should be applicable—this definition is unappealing to purists because the broader class of games falls clearly outside the scope of the techniques of theoretical analysis appropriate to “pure” abstract strategy games.

The analysis of a “pure” abstract strategy game tends to fall under combinatorial game theory. Abstract strategy games with hidden information, bluffing or simultaneous-move elements are better served by Von Neumann-Morgenstern game theory, while those with a component of luck may require probability theory incorporated into either of the above.

In some abstract strategy games there are multiple starting positions of which it is suggested that one be randomly determined: at the very least, in all conventional abstract strategy games a starting player needs to be chosen by some means extrinsic to the game. Some games, such as Arimaa and DVONN, have the players build the starting position in a separate initial phase which itself conforms strictly to abstract strategy game principles. However, most people would consider that although one is then starting each game from a different position, the game itself still has no luck element. Indeed, Bobby Fischer promoted randomizing the starting position of a game of chess in order to increase the game's dependence on thinking at the board, which is surely the chief object of an abstract strategy design.

[edit] Favorite abstract strategy games

According to two prominent websites which collect user ratings for board games, these are the abstract strategy games highest rated by players (as of December 2006):

	BoardGameGeek	Internet Top 100 Games List
1.	YINSH	Through the Desert *
2.	Go	Torres **
3.	Through the Desert *	Ingenious **
4.	DVONN	Hive
5.	Ingenious **	Go
6.	ZÈRTZ	DVONN
7.	Blokus *	Blokus *
8.	Torres **	Take It Easy **
9.	Hive	ZÈRTZ
10.	Zendo **	Zendo **
11.	Blokus Duo	Pueblo *
12.	GIPF	YINSH
13.	Hey! That's My Fish! *	Trax
14.	A Gamut of Games (book)	Ta Yü **
15.	Rumis *	Chess
16.	PÜNCT	Hex
17.	Chess	Focus (from A Gamut of Games)
18.	Ta Yü **	The Very Clever Pipe Game **
19.	Pueblo *	Twixt
20.	Deflexion	Shogi

This table uses BoardGameGeek's categorization of 'abstract strategy game', which is not necessarily consistently applied. For this reason games which support more than two players have been marked with * and games which violate some other part of the strict definition (such as having a random element or hidden information) have been marked with **.

These sites however are somewhat biased in their listing and ranking. The first site, BoardGameGeek.com, is advertisement-based, thus their game rating system may not be entirely objective, and both sites are based on user votes, so like the "top 250 Movies" list of imdb.com, it represents a very biased perspective.

The quantitative fact is that, of all these games (especially true for strictly Abstract Strategy games), Chess and Go are likely the most popular games, in that order, with Draughts or Checkers following in third. It is estimated that 605 million people know how to play chess, worldwide, 285 million people play chess over the Internet and 7.5 million are members of a chess federation ^[1]. Despite how these staggering numbers are questionable, they do represent the scale of the status of the game, worldwide. FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), the main representative body of chess players, is one of the most important sports federation in the World, behind only IOC and FIFA, with 160 member countries. As for Go, it has an estimated base of 40 million players worldwide, and over 70 member countries in the IGF (International Go Federation)^[2]. Checkers is an extremely popular game however, with a World Federation counting over fifty member countries

In 2005, the International Mind Sport Association regrouped under one umbrella the FIDE, IGF, World Draughts Federation and the World Bridge Federation, and is petitioning the IOC to have these four games included in the Olympics. Of course, Bridge would trump Go and Checkers in terms of popularity, with 128 countries member of the World Bridge Federation, were it not for the fact that, as it is not a complete information game, it may not qualify as a pure "Abstract Strategy" game, even in its "Duplicate" version.

As for the qualitative aspects, ranking Abstract Strategy Games according to their interest, complexity or strategy levels is a daunting task, and subject to extreme subjectivity, except to say that Tic-Tac-Toe is likely at the bottom of the list. In terms of measuring how finite a mathematical field each of the three top contenders represents, it is estimated that Checkers has a game-tree complexity of 10³¹ possible positions^[3], whereas chess has in the vicinity of 10¹²³^[4]. This explains largely why computer programs, through "brute force" calculation alone, are now besting human players. As for Go, the possible legal game positions range in the magnitude of 10³⁶⁰^[5], partly the reason why, to this day, computer programs can only play below "Dan" level.

Go players and Chess players alike agree that Chess is a more tactical game as opposed to Go, which is a more strategic game. Emmanuel Lasker, one of the most important game theoretician, world chess champion from 1894 to 1921 and inventor of the game Lasca, one said that "If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go". His cousin, Edward Lasker clarified this thought later in a book he wrote about Go called The Game of Go:

"While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play go."^[6]...

which sums up nicely Go's universal quality and why it is considered the World's greatest game...