I want a list of games that are played on a board, have relatively simple rules (an average person can learn the game in the course of a brief demonstration), and are impossible to `solve’ in the game-theoretic sense (there is no guaranteed winning strategy, and the person who makes the first move and plays a perfect game may lose).
My list to start off with includes chess (of course), go, and reversi.
It really isn’t known whether the first move initiative is or is not sufficient to win in chess. That’s in part because King and Pawn against King is not always a victory, depending on piece placement and which side possesses a positional attribute known as “the opposition”. If the opposing King does not have the opposition, but yours does, and your King is at least on the fifth rank, and your pawn is behind your King, then you can force a win. Otherwise, your opponent can force a draw. Even overwhelming material advantage might be insufficient. King and two Knights against a lone King, for example, is a draw.
You might like Halma - it’s essentially Chinese Checkers (although I think it predates that game), played on a square (16x16) board by two or four players - the object is to cross the board diagonally and ‘put away’ your pieces in the opposite corner - there’s jumping (as in checkers(draughts), but no taking of pieces - this typically makes for quite a close game - It starts off slow, speeds up in the middle (when all sorts of multiple jumps are possible as the players’ pieces pass each other), then slows down again at the end - the trick is not to let any of your pieces get left behind, or you’ll have to bring them home one painful diagonal step at a time.
There’s also Quandary - each player has four pieces that can move straight ahead or diagonally (just like chess pawns), but they can only move onto a square that is the same colour as at least one of the squares in front of one of the opposing player’s pieces - there’s no taking or even jumping in this game, but it is possible to block and plan ahead.
Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Othello, Mastermind (if that counts).
Pick a mancala game, any mancala game.
The rules are usually quite simple, but it takes a lot of strategy to play.
Another chess derivative is All The King’s Men - I’ve never played this, but a friend told me that it is richer and more complex in play than it might look.
Take a look at this site. It has pages on Shogi, Xiangqi, and other variant games.
Diplomacy’s another classic.
Conquest and Fuedal are commercial games that were chess-like. I don’t know if either is still being sold.
A few games I’ve played but don’t believe were ever sold in stores were Archers, Hex, and Loa. All are strategy games. If you’d like I can post the rules.
I just remembered another: Gess, which is an unusual combination of go and chess. Instead of moving single pieces you move groups of pieces. The rules for moving the groups varies based on what pieces are in the group and each move forms new groups for the next move.
I don’t know if they qualify for the “solvability” criteria, but here are several games with the “feel” of chess. (2-players, abstract pieces, no direct luck based elements)
The GIPF series:
GIPF, TAMSK, YINSH, ZERTZ, DVONN
Abalone, Pente/Omok, Cathedral, King’s Court…
For a game like Chess Shogi has to rate highly.
Also there are some chess variants that exist, one I know which seems quite well ballanced is to play with one side having King and 8 pawns, the other having a full set of pieces. The player with king and pawns gets two moves in a row for each one move of the full set opponent. The King can be taken with the pawn players second move as a way to win the game, and the pawn player gets to promote any pawn getting to the eighth rank.
he pawn player sets up with king and pawns on their usual squares, and no other pieces.
Connect-4.
Ludo aka parcheesi.
Any zero sum, two-player game is solvable, so you’re pretty much out of luck right from the get-go.
Scrabble.
Shouldn’t that be “any zero sum, two-player game without draws”? I thought that chess, for example, wasn’t necessarily solvable for that reason.
Actually, Connect-4 has been solved. Google “Connect-4” and “Victor Allis”.
Bzzrt. Wrong.
Obviously the OP made a mistake and confused “solved” with “solvable.” Chess is quite solvable but has not yet been solved due to the computational difficulties. (Generalized Chess is Exp. time complete without a drawing rule, Poly. space complete with a poly. move drawing rule.)
But games come in a large number of forms and types, some of which are solvable and many of which aren’t. Some variations in game types:
1, 2, multi-player…
Random or not.
Complete information or not. (Are cards face up, do all players know the same info?)
Bounded or not. (Is there a computable bound on the number of distinct positions?)
Etc.
(And to keep things simple, I’ll stick to simple win/lose/draw outcomes.)
Regular old solitaire is a 1 person bounded random game of complete information. It is not solvable due to the random starting nature. What is a perfect move for one game may be a terrible move for another even if the same cards are visible. (I.e., randomness is a bitch. Let’s not talk anymore of it.)
Note that the Halting Problem is essentially a 1 person unbounded game of complete information. It is also unsolvable. Ergo, there are also many two person unbounded games that are unsolvable.
As for bounded games, all 1 or 2 person non-random games of complete or incomplete information are solvable. Ditto multi-player games with complete information. However, there are 3 person games of incomplete information that are not only bounded but even finite-state which are unsolvable! (This has application in Computer Science where, for example, it can be shown that determining whether a given Database security schema can be cracked is unsolvable.)
Note that the solvability or complexity really in no way relates to the actual enjoyment of the game. Chess, Checkers and Go all have the same theoretical complexity, but do not have the same interest in practice.
I presume that the OP is actually looking for games where the solution is not known and presumed impractical to find, not games which are truly fundamentally unsolvable. Draws do not preclude solvability, they just (sometimes) preclude a winning solution: Witness tic-tac-toe, where perfect play will always lead to a draw, and which is considered solved.
Quoth Bippy the Beardless:
The version of this I’ve seen gives the double-moving player only the four center pawns, and it’s still overwhelmingly biased in favor of the double-moving player. For the double-moving player, the king alone is sufficient mating power, while for the regular player, even a king, queen, and rook all together is insufficient.
It appears that nobody has directly mentioned Go, although Little Nemo mentioned a hybrid. I don’t play Go, but from what I understand, it qualifies. Another example might be Hex, depending on what you mean by solvability: It’s known that the first player has a guaranteed-win strategy in Hex, but for moderately large boards, nobody knows what it is.
Thanks for the information of Connect-4, Orbifold. I’ve written a simple Connect-4 program, and had independently developed the strategy of even threats and odd threats, but I didn’t realize that the game had actually been solved (or even that humans are capable of perfect play!). I’m also a bit surprised that first move in column 3 or 5 can be drawn; in my experience that appears to always be a loss for the first player.
Quite a few years ago (this site says 1973), there was a game called Trippples. Two or four players build the board by placing tiles, each with three arrows, then advance their pieces from start to finish by moving according to the arrows on the tiles under the opposing pieces.
(If anybody wants it, I have a copy in black plastic instead of wood, $20 (US or CA) plus postage, or show me a cheaper price on the Web. Mail me.)
What about www.zillionsofgames.com? they have a lot, nay a zillion games, and right off the bat, I would easily guess at least 25% if not 33% are chess related.