Pairs
Pairs is a familiar term for, among others, under the name Memory from Ravensburger widespread social game and the English word for couples . The game is about revealing pairs of picture cards at the same time. Pairs is a term used worldwide for games of this type, which, compared to other names used for this game, does not enjoy any trademark protection.
Other common names:
- Remember
- Reveal couples
- Memo game
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history
The game most likely originates from Japan, where it has been known as Kai-Awase ( 貝 合 わ d, German for “joining shells”) since the 12th century . In this, a gold leaf was inserted over both halves of a shell and a scene was drawn on it. Both halves came in different containers. The players first took one from one container, placed it on the board and then tried to find the matching half in the other container. There were 360 shell halves in total. In the Edo period , the game was associated with marriage and became a popular dowry.
References to a game with cards known in England and the USA called Pairs and Pelmanism from the 19th century also point to a similar game principle.
In the 1940s, kindergarten teacher Bertha von Schroeder in Basel brought out what she called the twin game forerunner of today's memory with two card games, in a very small edition of 500 copies.
The twin game inspired Heinrich Hurter to create a children's version. In 1946 he brought his grandchildren back in London a game they had made themselves. They simply called it the memory game . They were pictures cut out from catalogs and magazines and pasted on. Heinrich Hurter's son William Hurter , Swiss military attaché in London, took over the new edition after his return to Switzerland in 1958 and is considered to be the inventor of modern memory.
William Hurter's first attempt to market the game through the game company Edition Carlit failed because Edition Carlit was already running a similar game called Punta .
The contact with Erwin Glonnegger at Ravensburger was ultimately successful . The graphic artist Manfred Burggraf reworked the pictures, and so in February 1959 the first pairs game was published by Ravensburger under the name Memory . This game is now widely used and is considered the market leader in this field. There are also other productions under other brand names and online versions as browser games . Nowadays, digitization and personalization also enable on-demand production using your own photos, as in the Pairsonally game, or by building your own using blank cards and photos, as with Pikso .
The game principle
A number of cards, on which the same pictures or symbols are shown in pairs, are shuffled and laid out face down, so that at the beginning it is not known where which card is. One of the players begins to turn over any two cards so that they are visible to all players for a short time. If the pictures are not the same, he has to turn the two cards over again and it is the next player's turn. If the pictures of the two cards are identical, the other player may keep these two cards (in this case he may also start over again to turn over two more cards). The game continues until all cards are successfully revealed.
The winner is the player who could reveal the most pairs.
Game success
With Pairs, it is crucial to remember where the individual images or symbols are hidden. A player with good memory can therefore bring many pairs into his possession.
In 1991 Uri Zwick and Mike Paterson published an essay in which, based on a perfect card memory, they described an optimal strategy that maximizes the expected number of winning pairs. If k cards are known of n pairs , the player should play, in simplified terms, as follows:
- In a situation with at least one known card and if the addition of the number of known cards and remaining pairs results in an even number, a new card should be revealed first and then an old card. This also applies in a situation with exactly six remaining pairs and one known card.
- In a situation in which three times the number of known cards has at least twice the value of the number of remaining pairs increased by one and the number of known cards added to the number of remaining pairs results in an odd value, two old cards must be revealed, i.e. that Submit the right to move.
- In all other cases two new cards should be revealed.
In games between amateurs, however, children can easily win this game against adults due to their higher (short-term) memory capacity, whereas in tournament play they usually lose due to a lack of strategy.
Web links
- Memory The well-known memory from Ravensburger
- Memory games (instead of memory games) for download and online games
- JavaScript memo game Photo series as a memo game, variable number of images, for 1–3 players plus PC with level 0 (random) to 10 (error-free) or correction mode
- Pairs as a Seed7 program
- Photo Pairs - An HTML5 memory game with photos from Flickr for 1 to 4 players
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mary M. Dusenbury: Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees. Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art . Hudson Hills Press, 2004, ISBN 978-1-55595-238-9 , pp. 248 ( google.de ).
- ↑ A memory game conquers the world , Basler Zeitung, August 10, 2007
- ↑ Constantin Gaul: Dynamic programming and board games: an overview . February 13, 2006. PDF file. Retrieved January 1, 2010
- ^ Uri Zwick and Michael Paterson: The Memory Game . November 22, 1992. PDF file. Retrieved January 2, 2010
- ↑ Comments from Peter Rösler on the similar game Memory . Retrieved January 1, 2010