The other day I met up with some friends to play a lot of different games, except Go (because we are all Go players and one of them wanted to do something different). Here you can see myself, teaching how to play Hex to César (the strongest Go player in Spain).
Hex is a board game invented in 20th century by Piet Hein, and also independently by John Nash. It’s played on an hexagonal grid, like a rhombus, and the idea is to connect one side to the opposite side (one player from left to right, the other player from top to bottom). The rules are deadly easy: in your turn you just put a stone in a empty hexagon, and that’s all. The first player who create a connected path between his sides, win. You can play on-line on Kurnik (real-time) or on Littlegolem (turn-based).
Having simple rules, the game is based in general strategic concepts, like Go. I mean, you can touch these strategic tips, you can apply them easily. So, for a strong Go player it wouldn’t be difficult to play quite decently. For example, I tried to use these general ideas, and I won several games against medium Hex players. The other day I taught César the rules of Hex, and in the second game he was playing good moves. Just applying things like: look for dual (or multiple) purpose moves, steal enemy strategy, search for moves with alternative paths of success (this is called “miai” in Go), and read out the sequences!
It’s impossible to teach something new to César 😉