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"It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men" (Savielly Tartakover)
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Apparently, the polish game server Kurnik has decided to drop Hex citing lack of interest. It sounds a little odd, since Kurnik was one of the big hubs for Hex on the net (the only comparable is Little Golem) and a lot of far less-known games with only a handful of players persist on Kurnik. It's also weird from a technical standpoint: I understand even the tournaments were completely automated.
I hear once upon a time, Yahoo games had Hex as well. If Dots and Boxes could survive there, why not Hex?
What is it about Hex that makes people drop it for no good reason?
I think it is important to keep this in mind regarding abstract strategy games in general. Abstract strategy games do go "extinct" if not played and if there is no community. I have a box of old ones that aren't played now, and don't have a community. Oh, they are out there from time to time, played by people experimenting, but not played normally. Because of this, it is important the abstract games community keep thinking about how to keep games alive and played, and adding more people. If you don't do this, you risk going extinct. This is a reason for IAGO existing, to keep a community of stakeholders involved with abstract strategy games to continue to exist and grow, assisting in this by whatever is needed to be done.
As for Hex, I think it may be a solved game, if I am not mistaken. Not sure why really though. Things do happen. Hex is actually one of the few abstract strategy games to end up on TV in a gameshow. I believe the gameshow was Blockbusters, and it used Hex the way Hollywood Squares used Tic-Tac-Toe. To see "Blockbusters" you can look it up on YouTube (put in "Blockbusters" in the search section).
From my experience one problem is lack of drama do to mid game transparency. The end of the game is often obvious far before it’s over making it anticlimactic. The few games I have participated in and watched are played until it is apparent who is ahead then a series of failed attempts are made by the losing player. This lengthens the game without adding anything to it. It's the struggle that is interesting not the winning and loosing.
Vintermann said: "Apparently, the polish game server Kurnik has decided to drop Hex citing lack of interest."
Kurnik is bullsh*t. They've got Chess, Checkers, Reversi, Backgammon, and a whole bunch of other j-standard games already played all over the Internet. The owner didn't exactly go out on a limb for modern abstract games. He once had eScrabble, a blatant rip-off of Scrabble. He removed it after being threatened with a lawsuit, rightfully so, by Hasbro.
Hex is one of the greatest games ever. It's easy enough for light play and yet at the same time deep enough for extremely strategic play. Beyond that it's perhaps the most elegant game ever invented. The fact that Kurnik dropped Hex does more to recommend it than condemn it.
Rich said: "As for Hex, I think it may be a solved game, if I am not mistaken."
You are mistaken. Hex is solved for at most a 7x7 board. Because of its uniformity and simplicity, Hex really needs to be played on at least an 11x11 board with the pie rule in place.
Dralius said: "The end of the game is often obvious far before it’s over ..."
That's absurd. If the outcome of the game is obvious to two equally matched players then the loser should resign and that *is* the end of the game. If your opponent's loss is obvious to you and yet he keeps making "failed attempts" then he's a less skilled player who doesn't realize that he's lost - the type of mismatch that can occur in any game.
As a fan of the game Mark certainly knows infinitely more about its strategies then I. My statement was primarily observational and limited to a very small number of games. I may not have witnessed or participated in an even match.
Hex being dropped due to lack of interest supports the notion that Hex is not a game for the masses. Why this is so or a misassumption is certainly up to debate. I would be happy to hear other opinions on the subject.
Dralius: Little Golem has a feature to view games by a certain player. Look at the games of the top players, it's _very_ hard to see who's ahead until it's over - and when one resign, I usually have to play out a couple of variations to convince myself why :-) Hex is maybe a game you have to try a bit to appreciate.
But Rich: Hex has a community, a significant one. Not as large as the traditional ones, but larger than most (all?) non-commercial modern abstracts. There have been international tournaments, and you can buy boards from at least two places I know of. It is also in no immediate danger of dying out, since it's solidly in the recreational mathematics canon. Still, some people feel that not only is it not worth implementing, it is <em>worth removing</em>. I wonder if not such misconceptions as you and Dralius have are not part of the explanation. But it has been a game for the masses once - when Piet Hein launched it in his newspaper column it caused a bit of a "craze". In Mattesmedjan, the Swedish mathematics centre I bought my board, they teach it to local schoolkids, and apparently it's a bit of a craze there as well, with several strong kids taking it seriously.
So where does these misconceptions come from?
vintermann, we need to get the Hex community to make itself known through IAGO. This includes people being involved here, and their tournaments getting added to the IAGO World Tour.
What I believe had happened is that ONE SITE found that it wasn't getting enough players, and it decided to pull it. Not sure why, but that is it. I find it hard to speculate why one site would be doing anything.
Well, I guess it is time to hunt down the Hex community.
Well, upon further research, it does look like there are places to play Hex on the Internet. Boardspace is one in particular:
http://www.boardspace.net/english/index.shtml
I wouldn't worry about it going away. It is there. Boardspace.net is one of the best places to play a game over the Internet.
http://www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/ has had support for Hex since pbmserv was initially created in June 1994.
There are currently ~10 games ongoing. And I beleive this is typical.
I know that Cameron Browne used pbmserv games as one (of possibly many) source for his book, Hex Strategy: Making the Right Connections, (c) 2000, A K Peters, Ltd.
rrognlie, I know Gamerz.net has just about every game under the sun. I am glad it is part of the IAGO Clubhouse.
Glad to see you are on board here.
Gamerz is a good site. Richard Rognlie put me on the map years ago when he added Tanbo and Quadrature.
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