Havannah is a two-player abstract game played with black and white stones on a hexagonal board, invented by Christian Freeling in 1976.  It belongs to the connection family of games such as Hex , Y , Atoll and Gonnect .

In 2002 Christian awarded a prize of €1000 for a program that would beat him once in a ten game match, before the summer of 2012.

• Board
• Objective
• Play
• External Links

Havannah is played on a hexagonal board with 8 or 10 cells per side.

The objective of the game is to be the first to create a ring, or a bridge or a fork:

• A ring is a loop of stones of like color, around one or more cells (these may be vacant or occupied by stones of either color).
• A bridge is a closed connection of stones of like color, between any two corners.
• A fork is s closed connection of stones of like color, between any three sides (corner cells do not belong to either side).

Draws are possible in Havannah, but they are extremely rare.

The game starts on an empty board.

Each player has stones of his allocated color: white or black.

Players take turns putting one stone on a vacant cell.  White begins.

Since the first player has a distinct advantage, the pie rule is sometimes used to make the game fair, in particular 'base-8'.  This rule allows the second player to switch colors as his first move.

• Havannah rules and history on MindSports.
• Havannah rules and history on Wikipedia.
• Buy Havannah on FunAgain Games.