Eppstein's mancala-like game
From Wikimanqala
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| Mancala-like CGT question, Eppstein's Mancala |
| © 1996, David Eppstein |
| USA |
| Used in maths research |
| Shared pits |
| One row |
| Reverse sowing |
In 1996 David Eppstein proposed an interesting impartial one-rank mancala-like game. His game is a disguised version of spel van de deler, better known as chomp in Combinatorial Game Theory (CGT), invented in 1952 by the Dutch mathematician Professor Dr. Frederick Schuh.
Rules
Eppstein's mancala-like game can be played with any number of pits which are filled in an arbitrary manner by some stones.
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| Possible initial set-up (following a suggestion from David Eppstein) |
Both players move rightwards. At his turn, a player picks up any nonzero number of stones from a pit and all stones from the consecutive pits (even zero if the pit is empty), finally dumping all picked up stones in the last pit of the sequence. Each move is, therefore, determined by the location of the first pit, the number of stones picked up from the first pit and the number of pits in the sequence. All those three numbers may be chosen independently by the player.
It is not permitted to pass a move.
The first player who cannot move is declared the winner. A draw is not possible.
References
- Eppstein, D.
- (1999) Mancala-like CGT question, 10 April. [E-mail]
External links
 | We publish it as we understand it is a fair use. Although the information posted in this web is under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License this does not imply the game has lost its copyright. You can consider the game and its rules have a copyright, and what is free is this way of explaining them. If you are the copyright holder and don't want to have it published here, please contact us |
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