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Star is another connection game from the author of Y and Poly-Y. Two players, Black and White, alternately put stones on the board. Since the first player generally has an advantage, the second player is often given the right to “swap” rather than make a move; that is, the players exchange colors and the first player (if you can still call him that) is now playing against his own first move. This discourages the first player from taking too much advantage of his first play. Stones never move after being placed. The object is to form “stars,” which are connected groups of stones that touch at least three of the 33 dark regions around the edge of the board. Each star is worth two points less than the number of dark regions it touches. When both players pass (because further plays can’t change the outcome), the player with the most points wins. This scoring system gives Star considerable depth. Since your score is related to the number of edge cells you occupy, but with two points deducted for each star, you have two competing goals: get territory on the edges, and link your stars together. And you will note that linking your own stars will usually prevent your opponent from linking his, and vice versa, so that careful judgments must be made all over the board. Knowledgable players have compared Star to Go; it could well be the greatest game invented in the twentieth century. Star was published in GAMES magazine (Sept. 1983), but when I first posted this page it seemed to have been sadly neglected since then. When Karl Heuer, who operates the play-by-email server described above, came across my site and wrote me suggesting that he might implement some of the games here, I immediately suggested Star as the most important game. Now that it is implemented, I am seriously considering organizing a Star tournament by email for later in the year, to be held on Karl’s server, with prize money that I will donate. Let me know if you think you’d be interested, and watch these pages for any announcement. One serious Star player is R. Wayne Schmittberger, editor of GAMES magazine. Schmittberger has an article in the June 2000 issue on connection games which again describes Star. Also, in a letter on page 2 of the second World Game Review (March 1984), he described a variation he invented called “Maxi-Star,” whose object is to create “the single star that touches the most edge regions, with the second-highest-scoring stars (and third-highest, and so on) being considered only in breaking ties. Maxi-Star places perhaps too much emphasis on the center in the early going, but later on, edge play gets quite interesting, as each player tries to undermine the other’s biggest star by scooping out territory underneath it.” Karl Heuer’s server also implements Maxi-Star. The first board shown above is the size recommended in the original GAMES article (75 cells, 33 border regions). Note that the sides of the hexagonal board are not quite the same length: three sides are long and three short. This ensures an odd number of border cells, making draws impossible. All such boards will have 3n2 cells for some integer n, and their borders will have 6n+3 cells. Schmittberger’s letter mentions his trying Star on boards of 243, 300, or 363 cells and finding its complexity reminiscent of go. Below are a board of 192 cells with a 51-cell border (top) and a board of 243 cells with a 57-cell border (bottom). If you download any of the boards on this page and expand them to full size the markings will be easier to read. Please note that my notation (numbers for horizontal rows, letters for northwest-to-southeast rows) is not the one Karl chose: his notation is more consistent with that used for Hex in e-play. I intend to revise my drawings to match his whenever I get some free time. |
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