Handicap

Playing with handicap means to give one of the players (preferably the weaker one) an advantage at the start of the game. The point of this is to make the game more even, so that it will be challenging for both players.

In Hex there is no standard way of playing with handicap, and because of this it is not very common to do so. This ought to be changed.

There are several ways a handicap could be implemented.

Non-rhombic board

One natural way is to play with an m × n board where m is distinct from n, and let the weaker player have the shortest distance between his sides. Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well, since there exists an easy, explicit winning strategy for the player with shortest distance.

Start with pieces on the board

Alternatively one can use the kind of handicap used in Go: The weaker player places a certain number of pieces on the board as his first move. A 1-piece handicap is the same as playing ordinary Hex without the swap option. With a handicap of two or more pieces, the first player either places the stones as he likes, or according to some pre-defined rules.

The drawback of this option is that even a 1-piece handicap gives a very big advantage. At least this is true on smaller boards (such as the 10 × 10 board). On larger boards, such as 19 × 19 this may be a good solution, and weak players may even be allowed to place three or four pieces against the strongest players.