Gess
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'''Gess''' is a [[strategic]] [[board game]] for two players, involving a grid board and mutating pieces. The name was chosen as a [[portmanteau word|conflation]] of "[[chess]]" and "[[go (board game)|go]]". It is pronounced with a hard "g" as in "go", and is thus [[homophone|homophonous]] with "guess".
Gess was created by the ''Puzzles and Games Ring'' of [[The Archimedeans]], and first published in [[1994]] in the society's magazine [[Eureka (magazine)|Eureka]]. It was popularized by [[Ian Stewart (mathematician)|Ian Stewart]]'s ''Mathematical Recreations'' column in the November 1994 issue of ''[[Scientific American]]''.
== Rules ==
* Gess is played on a grid of 18 × 18 ''squares''.
* Two players, "Black" and "White", each have 43 stones of their colour on the board in the starting configuration.
* Starting with Black, players take turns moving a piece on the board.
* A ''piece'' consists of a 3 × 3 grid of squares around a central square, each of which is occupied only by stones of one colour (or not occupied). The central square identifies the piece, and must exist on the board; the surrounding squares may be off the edge of the board (in which case they are unoccupied).
* Each piece can move as determined by the stones in its 3 × 3 grid, termed the ''footprint'' of the piece:
** The central square determines the extent of the piece's movement. If the square is unoccupied, it may move up to three spaces; if it is occupied by a stone, it may move any number of spaces.
** Each of the eight surrounding squares determines the directions the piece can move. If a square has a stone, the piece can move in the direction indicated by the square's location relative to the central square; if a square is unoccupied, the piece cannot move in that direction.
* As a piece moves, all of the stones in its footprint move in unison.
* When the footprint of a piece coincides with any other stones on the board, those stones are removed from the board and the move ends.
* A ''ring'' is any piece consisting of eight stones around an empty central square.
* When, at the end of any turn, a player has no ring pieces on the board, that player loses the game. If neither player has a ring piece, the player who has just moved loses.
* The game object is to be the only player with a ring piece on the board.
== Equipment ==
A [[go (board game)|go]] set is one easy way to assemble the equipment needed for gess. The 19 × 19 line grid is simultaneously an 18 × 18 grid of squares, and the starting position needs only 43 each of the black and white stones.
== Influences ==
The rules describe a highly variable set of pieces, which will often change every turn. In total there are 510 possible sets of a ''footprint''; however, the starting position uses these rules to emulate [[chess]] pieces: [[king (chess)|king]], [[queen (chess)|queen]], [[bishop (chess)|bishop]], [[rook (chess)|rook]] and [[pawn (chess)|pawn]] in this order R - B - Q - K - B - R in the last row (black's view) and 6 pawns in the next row.
The game objective, to remove the opponent's "ring" (described as a piece that moves like a chess king) also mimics that of chess.
== Notation ==
The rows are named 2 to 19 (1 and 20 being outside the grid), and the files are named ''b'' to ''s'' (''a'' and ''t'' again being outside the grid).
A move is notated by noting the place of the centre of the footprint at the beginning of a move and its place at the end of the move.
== External links ==
* [http://www.archim.org.uk/eureka/53/gess.html Gess the Game], original article at the online ''Eureka'' archive
* [http://www.chessvariants.com/crossover.dir/gess.html GESS -- a New chess/go variant], Gess @ chessvariants.com with links to a java applet to play Gess
[[Category:Abstract strategy games]]
[[de:Gach]]