Sowing
Sowing was invented by the English mathematician John Horton Conway , who presented it in 1994 at an international workshop of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) on combinatorial game theory in Berkeley , USA. It is the first single-row Mancala variant. Although the game was originally intended as a math problem, non-mathematicians can play it too.
regulate
Sowing can be played with any board size and any number of pieces. A board with a row of 24 wells (POTS) consists, in which three seed (seeds) are, is a possible variant of the game.
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- Possible starting position
Left (dt .: Links ) plays from left to right, while Right (dt .: Right ) playing from right to left.
In each turn, a player must distribute the entire contents of a pit in the direction of his move to the following pits. A seed is placed in each hollow until all the seeds are distributed.
The contents of a hollow may only be distributed if there are enough hollows in the pulling direction and the last seed would fall into a filled hollow.
The last player who can make a move wins. A tie is not possible.
variants
As a variant, Conway suggested that the player who can no longer draw first wins . In the terminology of combinatorial game theory, this game is called Misère-Sowing .
strategy
One strategy is for the player to create positions in which he can move himself, but the opponent cannot. The player who has the largest pool of moves is in a better position to win the game.
literature
- Erickson, J. Sowing Games (PDF file; 229 kB). In: Nowakowski, RJ (ed.). Games of No Chance . Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications 29. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England) 1996: 287-297.
- Guy, RK Unsolved Problems in Combinatorial Games . In: Nowakowski, RJ (ed.). Games of No Chance . Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications 29. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England) 1996: 486.