In Black and White: A GIPF Project Series, Part I: GIPF

First of "those geometric games" and namesake of the series, GIPF was a fairly simple opening into much larger fields of play.

I've always had an attachment to the GIPF Project from the first time I saw a copy of YINSH at the local game store. Like most, I was instantly attracted to what many consider to be the best game of the series not only because it looked alien in the same manner as a game you might see on Star Trek, but also because it didn't hold the visual complexity of some of its brethren like PÜNCT and DVONN. It felt like you could tell what those discs and rings were supposed to do without even knowing that. But all of them had the attraction of visual simplicity to one degree or another and that was likely based on a number of things. First, the black-and-white color scheme (even if occasionally interrupted by brief flashes of red in DVONN and, much later, many colors in LYNGK.) Black-and-white is not only a euphemism for simplicity, but it's also the traditional colors of one of the foundational strategy games of the Western world in chess and one from the Eastern world in go. That color arrangement simply screams "two-player abstract" not just to the gaming nerds like you and me, but also to the general public, not least because it's easy to draw that same color motif from one of the simplest games that we all learn as children: a black tic-tac-toe grid on a white piece of paper. And that's the second part of the Project's simple visual allure: the boards are all plain grids. This is the chess or checkers board. This is the go board. This is basic strategy that indicates that you can move to these vertices or along these lines or within these spaces with your pieces and I can do the same with mine and- in some combination of that movement -one of us will score or capture or isolate and eventually win.

So, after discovering and being kinda thrilled with YINSH, I backtracked and found GIPF, DVONN, and ZÈRTZ, which were the three that had already been released and then waited in anticipation for the eventual releases of PÜNCT, TZAAR, and finally LYNGK, 10 years later. (Yes, I know TAMSK had been released even prior to ZÈRTZ but it was a pretty limited run when they found out it didn't work because of hourglass issues, so I've never played it and neither have most other people, so this will be the last time it's mentioned. Every experiment has failures.) As both the first game of the Project and its namesake, GIPF had a lot of groundwork to lay for the games that followed and I think that may be at the root of what most people perceived as its marked simplicity even in comparison to its later brethren. I figured that, rather than arrange a list in terms of my personal favorites, I'd just follow the release order and move along in the same path that Burm did when he created them. Of course, by coincidence, the Project start is, in fact, my least favorite of the series, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad game. It just means that it's not as interesting to me as the rest of them. That may be a measure of my performance with it, as well, since I don't seem to grok the basics of it and usually lose whenever we play it. Perhaps it's too simple for me? Dunno.

The basic game is played like this: Both players start with three pieces on the board. Playing a piece means placing it on one of the black dots on the perimeter of the board and pushing it forward on one of the two connected lines. In doing so, you push forward any pieces that you come into contact with on that line, yours or the opponent's. When you have four of your pieces in a line, you remove them from the board and return them to your supply. If any of the opponent's pieces are in contact with yours in that line when you do so, you capture those pieces of the opponent. If ever one of the players no longer has a piece to play to the board, they lose. The standard game, which should really be the base game, is that your three starting pieces are double pieces (e.g. two pieces stacked together) referred to as GIPF pieces. They function just like normal pieces except that if either player ever doesn't have any of their three GIPF pieces in play, they lose. That means whether they've been captured by the opponent or simply been removed because they were part of a four in a row. If those pieces are part of your four in a row, you're not obligated to remove them (i.e. you could get four in a row including a GIPF piece, but only take three pieces of yours off the board) but at times it might be better, long-term, to do so if you're protecting a position. Those GIPF pieces can only be returned to play as two regular pieces and you have to keep in mind that if you sacrifice one of your GIPF pieces, you're one step closer to losing. The other thing to keep in mind in general is that, although capturing the opponent's pieces hinders them and returning your own pieces to your supply keeps you from approaching the "can't play so lose" point, removing your pieces from the board will generally leave you in a weaker position, since the opponent will often now outnumber you and have more options in terms of creating patterns.

Like chess and many other abstracts, GIPF is a game about thinking multiple moves ahead, since any move that you make in order to set up a four in a row is easily visible to your opponent, who can then make a counter-move or even take advantage of the way you've shifted pieces in the center of the board, which can occasionally become quite crowded with rows moving this way and that depending on how and in which direction new pieces are played from the edge. But it's the control of that center spot that is often key. Like go, where trying to value discrete areas of the board is an essential part of strategy, GIPF is the same way, but since those areas will be shifting in shape (again, like go), occupation of the center points will usually create more value, since you'll be able to branch out effectively in more directions than your opponent, who then may be forced to occupy the edges of the board for fear of being captured when approaching your center cluster. However, there is a strong play that is forming a "blob" of your pieces in one corner of the board that the opponent really can't approach for fear of being captured, leaving you to make opportunistic strikes elsewhere as they try to set up a position. I've never found one sure answer to strategy, which is usually the sign of a good game.

One thing that makes GIPF both distinct from some of its brethren as well as similar to a couple more of them is the level of direct interaction with the opponent. It's often a good idea to play in ways that leave you in direct contact with your opponent and also pushes them out of the patterns that they were hoping to develop. In the same way that it exposes you to risk of their forming a line and capturing, it also enables you to do the same thing. In this day and age of multiplayer solitaire (yes, even in 2-player games), the level of direct confrontation that happens in GIPF supersedes even many others in the Project. It's less that you're playing against the conditions of the game and more that you're playing directly at your opponent, very much like that plain tic-tac-toe grid that demands the same kind of confrontation. And it's the aforementioned patterns that are frequently important here, as recognition of those are key to predicting which way they'll shift and how you can take advantage of it. This, too, is go or chess at their most fundamental level, with GIPF occupying a middle road between the simpler game (go) and the more complex one (chess) and still presenting a sound basis for its own strategic outlook.

Next up is one of my favorites of the series, which is the one that is a board game without an actual "board": ZÈRTZ.