Based on the review’s description and evaluation, Give & Take probably deserved to survive, but it seems to be out of print and no longer available even on eBay. I add the manufacturer’s name (“Ideal”) to the present game to avoid confusing it with one invented Christopher Elis (with his boyhood friends) that is also named Give and Take; the latter game is a promising checkers variant published in GAMES May 1999. To play Ideal’s Give & Take you could print out the board shown above (or make a facsimile) and use a supply of small pieces in two contrasting colors -- Go stones, Pente beads, or simply pennies and nickels. Initially the board is empty. During the first phase the players alternately place one piece of their color onto the blue circle in any region, as long as the region does not border any other region already occupied by a friendly piece. (Diagonally adjacent regions are acceptable.) As soon as one player has no more legal moves, the second phase begins: the players alternately place a piece onto the board in a space that is adjacent to one or more friendly pieces, and the friendly pieces adjacent to that space are removed. The object is to be the first player to reduce to a single piece. There is also a short version, which means using only the light-colored section of the board. But even the normal version is done very quickly, as both the GAMES review and John Lawson’s communication attest. According to the review the game leads to some tricky situations, where moves that appear desirable will actually lose by creating opportunities for even more devastating countermoves. If anyone would care for a game by e-mail, feel free to use my link below! In case I get too many responses to play myself I can start referring people to each other, and we’ll have started the world’s first Give & Take club. Actually, this game would probably not be too hard for a programmer to implement on Richard’s PBeM server, if you know the script languages he uses. I was delighted to get Mr. Lawson’s corrections and clarifications of the rules to this game, and particularly to hear that after being reminded of this game he was considering teaching it to his 11-year-old daughter! But he also writes that the book nowhere credits the game’s original author. If anyone who knows who invented this game should read this -- perhaps someone who worked at Ideal, or perhaps the inventor him- or herself -- I’d be glad to hear who it was. |
