Hello there, I will publish some videos of competitive board games, some lessons, teachings, analysis, puzzles... to support Mind Sports and particularly the community of Little Golem which is probably the platform with the best abstract games players in the world. I'm an expert in two players abstract games with perfect information, for instance 9 times World Champion of TwixT. You can also check my Little Golem page to see the list of games I'm focusing.
Note that everybody is welcome to challenge me on Little Golem, Playstrategy, IGGC, BGA, or even join the discord to talk about games, you can find the links on the banner.
It's also possible to participate to a stream, feel free to contact me for this. (-;
@@suntzu6122 Two things, solving depends strongly on the size of the board. I think Hex is solved until 9x9. Second, when you use the swap rule, the second player has a winning strategy not the first. Globally when you play let say on 14x14 nobody knows how to win and using swap rule the game is really fair.
@@bbzabstractgames But if one player gets a lead can you even defend against it if they play well? Not trying to be 'that guy' because actually this game really intrigues me. Initially it seems like a solved game though. The fact this game has like.. 2 rules total is actually super cool and gives this game allll the style points.
@@suntzu6122 Of course you can defend. It's not so easy to say who is winning unless you can understand quite deeply a position. Sometimes a beginner will think "haha I'm winning this easy" and 3 moves later "hum... I'm just losing" 😆
@@bbzabstractgames I see. Yea quoridor is a lot like that. Playing the computer in quoridor is pretty demoralizing lmao ive only beat it once. Damn computer does a VICTORY DANCE at the finish line before it stomps me out by 10 moves lol.
@@suntzu6122 I made a video about Quoridor to explain the basis: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Smo2j7QNUnc.html To go further you can also check the youtube of an expert: www.youtube.com/@quoridorstrategy
For me, between Xiangqi and Shogi, it is undeniable that both board games are addictive and fun to play, just like Western chess. I have a fondness for chess because it was the first board game I learned to play. Shogi I find very fun to learn and also very addictive. Xiangqi I believe is equally complex as Shogi and much more addictive (in my opinion).
I started with chess and then many years later took up shogi and xiangqi. I know a lot of people like to have 'favorites' but for me choosing between shogi and xiangi is like choosing between pizza and cake, or Beethoven and Mozart. I might also add a third game to consider- *Janggi* or Korean chess. It is derived from Xiangqi but has enough differences to make it a distinctly different game. It is much easier to defend in Janggi and games tend to be considerably longer than Xiangqi. As a western chess player I felt more at home in Janggi than the others. I have also tried Burmese chess and Thai chess but I don't think think they are quite as good. But I don't mean that in a condescending way, I mean that only in comparison to shogi , xiangqi and janggi they are not as good. But if chess had never been invented and one day somebody came up with the idea for Burmese or Thai chess they would likely be a big global sensation.
Very nice explanation! Slither is my second favourite game on littlegolem :D By the way, 12:20 this is very similar to the concept of minimaxing in hex.
Sorry Florian but that is NOT the advanced rule. The real advanced rule was not implemented on iggc because it was more complicated than Luis wanted to deal with. If you consult the pdf, a stone must be in an orthogonal group of BOTH colors if you want to move it . The reason is you could add another stone touching the first one and walk them like a pair of shoes up to the center, so it was quickly abandoned. Please put this in the video description, thanks!
Done! By the way, I really don't like advanced rules. It's a focus on the first player advantage when this advantage is very small but on the other hand this is killing all the beauty of the game. I even don't think a swap is "necessary", it's a little better because the first stone is not in the middle, but it does not change many things. The standard game is awesome, far far better in my opinion than advanced one.
Hum, it depends what we are talking about. Blokus is probably harder in the sense that if you make a little weak move the game is lost, you need to be really precise. On the other way, Slither allow you to be not so focused on the very first moves but is really hard in the strategies and in the final combinations. Overall I woul not say on is harder than the other, they are really different and not hard in the same sense.
I came up with this opening rule for Gomoku: Game starts with one black stone at the center and one white stone next to it. Player 1 places a black stone. Player 2 chooses to play as black or white. What do you think?
J'espérai capturer plus justement, gagner d'un coup en fait lol, genre 35 mais je me suis planté en comptant, en effet je suis totalement gagnant dans cette partie aussi, pas eu de bol du tout. Je ne sais pas dans quelle mesure le fait de parler en même temps me déconcentre, face aux meilleurs joueurs c'est compliqué, je fais des erreurs un peu grossières. C'est sûr que je devais gagner 3-1 ce match, j'ai un peu fait n'importe quoi à des moments clé, et il suffit d'une grosse connerie par partie pour perdre.
@@bbzabstractgames je vois pas comment tu puisses gagner plus que 4 là et comment t'es totalement gagnant. Je dirais juste que avec 13D tu arrives à 12-12 et aussi à niveau positionnel la partie est ouverte 50%-50%.
@@matematikemulo Je pensais plutôt par exemple au coup 32, si je joue e, c, d, e je me retrouve avec un 4 et pas un 3 en f et la partie est 100% gagnée et même de bcp. Du coup il doit sans doute faire sauter son 10 avant que cela soit un 12 et idem ça se gagne facile du coup.
Sorry for this massive blunder at move 6 in Blokus game, does not make any sense, almost everything was winning by like 10 points, like playing the V instead at the same place, or even better probably just playing the Z on top. Cannot explain my own move because I don't understand it 😆
I started as a weak chess player, I practise shogi a lot and a little bit of xiangqi. I much prefer shogi and I think I am a better chess player (except for pawn finales) now that I have practised shogi.
Really great video and superb explaination of Gomoku. It certainly is a great game - Renju too - but it's very hard to transition from the beginner, to understanding openings and swap 2. There seems to be very little literature or online content in this area. Ive been certainly put off in the past into delving deeper into the game as the gap online between people playing freestyle and swap 2 is so vast one stands no chance against someone of any experience.
Interessante la tier list! Tu placerais selon les criteres de ta tier list - Battle sheep - Hey that's my fish - Stratego - Kamisado - Patchwork (abstrait je crois?)
Battle Sheep c'est un jeu j'en suis tombé amoureux dès ma première partie, d'ailleurs j'ai remporté les tournois 2022 et 2023 aux Mind Sports alors que je connaissais même pas complètement les règles en 2022, je le mettrai clairement en Really Good et plus probablement même en Amazing que ce soit pour son originalité ou sa puissance. Hey that's my fish... je vais être honnête, je ne connais pas. Stratego, je ne pense pas que je le mettrais en abstrait, trop d'informations sont cachées. Kamisado aurait sa place en Medium a minima et pourrait largement prétendre à être en Good, mais je ne le vois pas plus haut. Patchwork c'est compliqué, excellent jeu, que beaucoup considèrent en abstrait, perso j'ai un peu de mal avec ce concept de départ hasardeux potentiellement très déséquilibré, comme Kamisado je n'irais pas plus haut que Good.
Respect le resultat pour Battle Sheep! Ben si tu aimes le jeu, jette un oeil a "Hey that's my fish", c'est du controle de territoire sans pitié. En tout cas super travail ta chaine, il y a un vraiment du potentiel pour les jeux abstraits, souvent mal aimés, et tu sais vraiment donner envie de s'y plonger. @@bbzabstractgames
Gonnect looks really interesting. I don't suppose that's an AI so some of us mere mortals can practice? Nice videos. Very instructive and interesting. I like how you say you've never played a game and promptly play at a level most of us would need a year of practice 😅
Gonnect is also a way i guess to start to play "Go", because the overall objective is really simple to understand when it's really hard to explain for instance to a child for classical "Go". To start to play "Go", I think Gonnect and Atari Go are pretty nice. I don't think we have AI for Gonnect but maybe someone made this somewhere...
@@bbzabstractgames thankyou! Yes I agree. I think this is what got me interested. I enjoy playing Go but at the same time know that I will never have, or will put in the hours to become even half decent. This is a nice option for me to play the game a bit more often - whilst having the feel of other abstracts that I play more frequently. To be honest, I'm not super fond of hex, though I do play it online, but I'd probably enjoy it more also if I was playing this game regularly. It's probably too much to hope for but I'd love so see you play Mill with some of the good players at PlayOK. That's a totally underrated game and very difficult to play well. This is what I play most and would be super curious to see how someone who plays abstracts as well as you tackle it - well maybe you did already 😉 - Anyways, superb channel. I'll keep watching out for new games. I think I got into Xiangqi through one of your videos.
One thing that I found quite interesting about your interpretation of the games is that you said that Shogi is more tactical than Chess and Xiangqi is more strategic than Chess. Most people would argue the exact opposite for the two games. Shogi has much slower-moving pieces, and at higher-level play, the game becomes extremely positional. Xiangqi on the other hand has no real concept of pawn structures, and every piece is poised to attack from the very beginning, so it ends up being much more aggressive and tactical. People say that Xiangqi starts right in the midgame.
I don't remember what I said exactly :D But I would say the following: Shogi is a game really far in my opinion from chess because of the dropping pieces. The game is like there is a moment you can go for a tactical checkmate sacrificing everything and dropping everything on the King to checkmate. In this sense it's tactical, but on the other hand I agree that a Shogi game can be... really long and has some positional aspects. Xiangqi is a game on my point of view that is pretty "close" to chess, but I don't really think it's more strategic than chess, it's something different and yes you have some nice tactics with canons especially that are surprising for a chess player.
Can't we just play c5 and e3 in a single move, without the split moves using the two threats in the north and west ? Is there some kind of defence in that case ?
I guess in the end it should be close, something like 50.e3 c5 51.d2 g1 52.c4 c6 53.c3 c8 54.a4 h16 is also working and you play h16 in the end. You even win in move 56 instead of 58, I guess the bot is just playing one of the winning sequences, the first he found during his analysis.
The first move (B1-B2) is immediate to find as it's the only defense. It is also clear that white has the advantage. However analyzing from that position and determining that everything wins by one move is outside of my analysis capability if I don't move the pieces.
Yeah I did not provide either the full analysis until the end, since even there you have too many variations. Until I could calculate, it seems white always win by one move.
It's possible yes, but it almost never happens. So it's really a theoretical question. It's the same for TwixT, it's possible to make a draw but... It's almost never the case.
Interesting discussion (-: It doesn't change the idea, but I think the best solution to puzzle 2 starts with a1b1: the ejection is achieved one move earlier (6 black moves rather than 7).
Great video, merci Florian! Couple of comments: 1) If you want to take up Shogi or Xiangqi regularly, even just casually, do NOT learn the pieces with Western symbols like in this video! The problem is that all tournaments, published materials and many websites will not support these symbols. Take 20-60 minutes (that is all it takes) to learn the Chinese/Japanese symbols. You will be rewarded by being able to access the bulk of published materials out there and live tournaments. The rest of the comments apply to Xiangqi 2) The central 9-square zone in which the king (or "General") is trapped is called "Castle" rather than "Palace". I've also seen this translated as "Fortress", but "Castle" is the most common. 3) The two pieces in the castle with the king are called "Advisors" (not "Dwarves"). In notation (including this video) when this piece moves, it is given the letter "A" for Advisor". Some translations call this piece "Mandarin", but prefer "Advisor". "Mandarin" is old English for "Advisor" or "Councillor". 4) The elephant can be blocked if a piece is in the path of the 2-step diagonal move. Any piece which blocks the elephant's move is said (in Chinese) to be "in the eye of the elephant" (a beautiful phrase) 5) The king's don't "act like rooks to the other king", which is slightly ambiguous. The rule is usually stated as "the kings cannot face each other on an open file", which is simpler. Florian makes a nice summary of the Xiangqi rules, but misses two vital rules: 6) 3-fold repetition does not lead to an automatic draw (like in Western Chess). It is sometimes illegal! When a stronger piece attacks a weaker piece, this is called "chasing" in Chinese. And "perpetual chasing" is NOT allowed. The most common scenario where this applies is when a piece like the rook attacks (or "checks") the king. In Western chess, perpetual check is a draw, but in Xiangqi the 3rd check is disallowed. In serious tournaments, you may actually lose the game immediately if you check for a 3rd time in-a-row. In tournaments with non-Chinese players, you will usually be given a warning by the arbiter (like making an illegal move), and allowed to redo the move. But "perpetual chasing" also applies if a rook attacks a weaker piece like a cannon or promoted pawn, or even if two rooks attack a piece. This is by far the most complicated Xiangqi rule. It is simplest to start by just thinking "perpetual check is not allowed" and forget about rarer perpetual chase scenarios for now. 7) Florian misses a really vital rule in Xiangqi - there is no stalemate! If the opponent cannot move, the player who cannot move loses. This is a common way to end a a game of Xiangqi. Nice video, Florian. I agree with your comment that Xiangqi is more similar to Western chess than Shogi. I highly recommend this wonderful game. This comment is from Alain Dekker who is a Pentamind World Champion (2004) and has played as a non-Chinese/non-Vietnamese in two Xiangqi World Championships (I was crushed by the strong Chinese GMs, of course!)
As someone with a lot of experience in this area, I disagree on point #1. Many people struggle to learn Chinese characters. It's okay to learn it however you want, but the most important part of is learning AND enjoying the game. Once you are familiar with the pieces, you can learn whatever symbols it takes, as this is necessary for interacting with learning material. But in the very early learning stages of the game, the actual rules and movements can be too much for some people.
@@CouchTomato87 You need to learn the symbols to progress beyond the "Yeah, I kinda know the rules" stage, though. Unless you're just looking to dabble, learn the symbols as early as possible as the reward/effort ratio is very high.
@@bigalain1261 that’s not quite true. I know two very strong players who learned using that internationalized set. As long as you can play it, it’s viable. The game itself is not changed
Strongly disagree on point #1. This alone has limited the growth of Xiangqi in Western countries. Xiangqi would grow outside China very quickly if it had symbols on pieces, and certainly I would like to see 3D pieces as chess has. Tradition is nice, but thinking outside box has its place.
