Havannah
Havannah is a connection game created by Christian Freeling. It can be played on many game sites, including Little Golem and igGameCenter.
How to play
The game is played on a hexagonal board of hexagons. The base-8 and base-10 boards are popular sizes. The base-8 looks like this (the area between the lines of stars):
The players are identified by two different colors, such as Black and White. On Black's turn, he or she places a black piece on an empty cell; White does the same with a white piece. The goal of the game is to be the first player to make a chain that forms one of these winning patterns:
- a fork: a connected chain that has pieces on three edges of the board (where corner cells do not belong to any edge)
- a bridge: a connected chain that has pieces on two corner cells
- a ring: a connected chain that has at least one cell (empty or not) on its interior
Draws are possible but very rare.
On Little Golem, Havannah on base-8 and smaller boards is played with the swap rule.
Links to Problems
Some problems are posted in the Little Golem forum. Here are links to them:
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=324 Problem 1 (size 8), 2008-11-03 by ypercube
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=329 Problem 2+3 (size 8), 2008-11-17 by jamjam:
Problem 2: tactical corner/3 sides connect
Problem 3: count number of moves to connect!
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=1985 Problem 4 (size 8), 2009-03-20 by ypercube
(in General Forum)
http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=334 Problem 5 (size 10), 2009-04-20 by Carroll
(#1009271 Pascal Huybers vs. Carroll, the first board)
Solved board sizes
Size 1 and 2:
- first player wins
Solution for size 3:
- first move in corner wins
- other first moves lose
Size 4:
- is much more difficult than size 3 and not known yet
- probably most first moves are winning (i.e. should be swapped), however e.g. first move on an edge is not clear
