Game of the Amazons

The Game of the Amazons (in Spanish, El Juego de las Amazonas; often called Amazons for short) is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented in 1988 by Walter Zamkauskas of Argentina. It is a member of the territorial game family, a distant relative of Go.

The Game of the Amazons is played on a 10x10 chessboard (or an international checkerboard). Although the game uses pieces with moves like a chess queen, it is in no sense a chess variant. The two players are White and Black; each player has four amazons, which start on the board in the configuration shown. A supply of markers (checkers, poker chips, etc.) is also required.

File:Amazonsw.gif

The rules are as follows: White moves first, and the players alternate moves thereafter. Each move consists of two parts: moving one of one's own amazons one or more empty squares in a straight line (orthogonally or diagonally), exactly as a queen moves in chess; it may not cross or enter a square occupied by an amazon of either color or an arrow. After moving, the amazon shoots an arrow from its landing square to another square, using another queenlike move. This arrow may travel in any orthogonal or diagonal direction (even backwards along the same path the amazon just traveled, into or across the starting square if desired). An arrow, like an amazon, cannot cross or enter a square where another arrow has landed. The square where the arrow lands is marked to show that it can no longer be used. The last player to be able to make a move wins.

The strategy of the game is based on using arrows (as well as one's four amazons) to block the movement of the opponent's amazons and gradually wall off territory, trying to trap the opponents in smaller regions and gain larger areas for oneself. In practice the game usually ends when all of the amazons are in separate territories (so that no square can be reached by amazons of both colors). The player with the largest amount of territory will be able to win, as the opponent will have to fill in her own territory more quickly (most regions can be completely filled in by an amazon).

The game was first published in Spanish in the Argentine puzzle magazine El Acertijo (number 4, December 1992). An English translation was written by Michael Keller and an articles first appeared in the chess magazine NOST-Algia. Other game publications also published the rules, and the game gathered a small but devoted following. The Internet spread the game more widely, and it is considered by many aficionados to be one of the best and deepest abstract games.

Michael Keller wrote the first computer program to play The Game of the Amazons in 1993 (in Fortran with a text interface; a later version was written in Visual Basic). Quite a few stronger programs have been written in recent years by various authors.

El Juego de las Amazonas (The Game of the Amazons) is a trademark of Ediciones de Mente. An authorized version of the game appears in the Transpose collection by Kadon Enterprises.

References

• Transpose by Kadon Enterprises