Comments on Hex

For those who don't know this game, read my rules of Hex.

The beauty of Hex

Hex is the most elementary game one can imagine. Still it is interesting enough to play for a long time. The rules can be learned in thirty second. The board is simple, only two colors of stones are used. Yet, the game is very rich in its way of thinking. In comparion the games of Go and Chess are complicated. Go looks simple, but the rules are remarkedly complex and in Chess the rules are rather hard to recollect, because each piece has its own way of moving. Hex looks simple and it is simple.
      One of the most beautiful aspects of Hex is that the game can never be a draw. A winning connection of one player inhibits the winning connection of the other player. Because of this, Hex is a very strategic game. Actually, it's the most strategic game I know.

The limitations of Hex

If Hex is so beautiful, why isn't it played more often? Why isn't it as famous as Chess, Checkers or Go? One of the answers may be that Hex is an almost excusively strategic game. The way of thinking is always top down and local moves do not influence the game as a whole. Another way of putting it is that in playing Hex you always use the same heuristic principle.
      After a while, I get bored playing Hex, because I'm never suprised by the way the game develops. Pieces are put on the board one by one and the game slowly unfoldes, but the course of the game is never changed dramatically.

Overcoming the limitations of Hex

For some time I have been thinking about a variant of Hex, in which tactics would be more important and more drama and excitement would be introduced to the game. In this new game neither the goal nor the hexagon board is changed. Also preserved is the fact that the number of pieces is constantly growing, so that the game is forced to end and will never be a draw. What I díd want to change is that pieces should be allowed to move during the game.
      The new game has been called Trinidad. In this game, each player can add stones to the board, and subsequently move his stones. More specifically, in each turn a player may (1) add a stone to an empty field, which is adjacent to a stone of his own and (2) move a row of his stones as far as the length of the row. Trinidad turns out to be a lot more exciting than Hex. The course of the game can be dramatically altered by certain moves. Both strategic planning and smart tactical thinking are needed. For a full discusion of Trinidad and for a Windows program for learning the game, see the Trinidad page.