Havannah

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Havannah is a connection game created by Christian Freeling. It can be played on many game sites, including Little Golem and igGameCenter.

How to play

The game is played on a hexagonal board of hexagons. The base-8 and base-10 boards are popular sizes. The base-8 looks like this (the area between the lines of stars):


The players are identified by two different colors, such as Black and White. On Black's turn, he or she places a black piece on an empty cell; White does the same with a white piece. The goal of the game is to be the first player to make a chain that forms one of these winning patterns:

  • a fork: a connected chain that has pieces on three edges of the board (where corner cells do not belong to any edge)
  • a bridge: a connected chain that has pieces on two corner cells
  • a ring: a connected chain that has at least one cell (empty or not) on its interior

Draws are possible but very rare.

On Little Golem, Havannah on base-8 and smaller boards is played with the swap rule.

Links to Problems

Some problems have been posted in the Little Golem forum, here are links to them:

http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=324 Problem 1 (size 8), 2008-11-03 by ypercube

http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=329 Problem 2+3 (size 8), 2008-11-17 by jamjam:

Problem 2: tactical corner/3 sides connect

Problem 3: count number of moves to connect!

http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=1985 Problem 4 (size 8), 2009-03-20 by ypercube

(in General Forum)

http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=50&topic=334 Problem 5 (size 10), 2009-04-20 by Carroll

(#1009271 Pascal Huybers vs. Carroll, the first board)

Solved board sizes

Size 1 and 2:

  • first player wins

Solution for size 3:

  • first move in corner wins
  • other first moves lose

Size 4:

  • is much more difficult than size 3 and not known yet
  • probably most first moves are winning (i.e. should be swapped), however e.g. first move on an edge is not clear

See Also

Y

External Links

Havannah on mindsports.nl

Havannah: the Twilight Zone

Havannah page on Sensei's Library