Six

Six is a free Hex playing program running on Unix written by Gábor Melis. The currently offered version is 0.5.3. It has won ICGA Hex tournament in 2003, 2004 and 2006. Six is quite good against human beings too.

Features

• It allows playing form size 4 to 15.
• It offers 4 different skill levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert).
• Games as well as positions can be saved.

Windows Port

Six has been adapted to Windows by ab. The project came out a thread in the Little Golem forum. "ab" separated the GUI from the Six engine, thus creating HexGui, inspired by GoGui.

To play the AI:

• Put HexGui.jar and six_gtp_engine.exe in one directory
• Double-click on HexGui.jar (or use "java -jar HexGui.jar")
• File menu / attach / "six_gtp_engine.exe --level=0"
• F5 to make a computer move, or
• Game menu / Computer plays / "Black" or "White" or "Both"

While the computer makes a move, which can take a while at expert level, you cannot access all the program functions. The two zip files full of source code are unnecessary to play.

See also

Hexy is another Hex playing program. Hexy runs on Microsoft Windows.

Roland Illig vs. Six 0.5.3, 2007-09-28.

External links

Six on Gábor Melis page.

Download Windows version.

8 games between Six and Mangoose in the 8th Computer Olympiad in Graz (2003).

References

Six is pretty damn strong on a fast machine a forum topic by David J Bush (top hex rating > 2150 on Little Golem).