Surakarta
Majority wins
The same game, except a stalled position is won by whoever has more pieces.
What is different here
If you already play {other}, these are the rules you have to unlearn.
- After fifty moves without a capture the player with more pieces wins; an equal count is still a draw.
- It changes the endgame completely: being a piece up is worth playing for rather than something to convert.
As standard, but after 50 moves without a capture the side with more pieces wins (equal counts draw).
Shared by every {game} code
The board and the circuits
Thirty-six points in a six-by-six grid. Each player's twelve pieces fill the two rows nearest them.
Two loops are drawn over the grid. The inner circuit runs along the second and fifth lines in each direction, joined at each corner of the board by a quarter-circle arc. The outer circuit does the same with the third and fourth lines, on a wider curve. Each circuit is a single closed track twenty-four steps long, and the four points where its lines cross sit on it twice.
Draw them and you have the board. Leave them out and there is no game: they are the only route by which anything can ever be captured.
Quiet moves
A piece may step one point in any of the eight directions to an empty point. That is all a quiet move does. Stepping onto a piece, or over one, is not possible.
Capturing along a loop
To capture, a piece sets off along one of the circuits it stands on, in either direction, and travels as far as it likes. Every point it passes must be empty. It must pass through at least one arc. It captures the first enemy piece it reaches and lands on that point.
The arc requirement is absolute. A piece that could reach an enemy in a straight line along the circuit without curving cannot take it that way; it must go the long way round. This is what makes the game strange and good.
A piece may pass over the point it started from, once it has left it, so a capture can travel most of the way round the board. It may pass through two arcs, or more. It may not pass over any piece at all, its own or the enemy's: the first piece it meets is either its target or the reason the capture is impossible.
Only one piece is captured per move, and capturing is never compulsory. A quiet move is always available.
Winning
You win by capturing all twelve enemy pieces, or by leaving your opponent with no legal move.
In the standard game, fifty moves without a capture is a draw. The majority-wins variant ends the same position differently: whoever has more pieces takes the win, and only an equal count draws.
Notation
Points are named a1 to f6. A quiet move is written from-to. A capture uses x and names the arcs it travelled through in brackets, so b2xe5[bottom-left] is unambiguous even when the same two points could be joined by another route.