Abalone

Opening Position

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

An Abalone board and fourteen each of black and white counters are required for play. The Abalone board consists of sixty-one cells arranged in a 5x5x5 hexagon. The counters sold with marketed version of the game are large marbles and will be called marbles here.

History

Abalone was invented by Michel Lalet and Laurent Lévi. It was published in 1990 and has been extremely successful commercially, selling more more than 4.5 million units since. It is currently sold in more than thirty countries.

Objective

Abalone has been described as “Sumo wrestling with marbles” or “tug-a-war on a board” as the objective is to push opposing marbles off the edge of the board. The winner is the first to push six opposing marbles off.

Play

Turns alternate with black moving first. Marbles are moved in lines of one, two, or three either inline or broadside as illustrated below. An inline movement must be towards an adjacent vacant cell in the direction of the movement, except when pushing opposing marbles, as described below. When making a broadside move, every counter that is part of the move must always be moving to a vacant cell.

Black opens with a broadside move.

White counters with an inline move.

An opposing marble that is adjacent to one of the endpoints may be pushed with an inline movement to a vacant position or off of the board. Marbles may only push opposing marbles if the pushing line has more marbles and numerical superiority to the opposing pushed line. Therefore, three friendly marbles inline may push one or two opposing marbles and two friendly marbles may only push one opposing marble. Opposing marbles must be pushed into a vacant position or off the board and not be blocked by marbles of either color.

A line of three white marbles makes a push against two black.

After the move, one of the black marbles has been pushed off the board and captured by White. Now it is Black's turn.

Strategy

At least three generalities can be surmised about Abalone Strategy.

  • For obvious reasons, try to keep your marbles closer to the center of the board and force your opponent to the edges.

  • Keep your marbles close together for increased defense and attack, especially in a hexagon shape that is able to push or defend in any direction.

  • Pushing the opponent off board is not always ideal, especially if it leads to weakening a friendly structure.

Variations

Alternate opening positions have been created to make the game less likely to draw:

German Daisy or Marguerite Opening Position.

Belgian Daisy Opening Position

Abalone can be played by two people (or more) using the same board with fewer marbles, each in three different colours.

A number of two-player variations use a third color for passive pieces, for example variation The Pillar (with a fixed marble in the center of the board), which has been examined to some depth by Alex Borello and Nicolas Le Gal. Another possible variation involves either player winning the game by ejecting the central marble. A few variations use a second layer of marbles.

Sources

  1. Abalone at wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_(board_game)

  2. Abalone at Board Game Geek. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/526/abalone