EinStein würfelt nicht!, (Ewn)
a turn-based two-player board game of chance and strategy, designed by Ingo Althöfer in 2004. It was the official game of an exhibition about Albert Einstein in Germany during the World Year of Physics 2005[1]. Ingo introduced his game to computer chess programmers at the IPCCC 2005 in Paderborn, where it was immediately played with enthusiasm between rounds [2][3], further spread and played during the ICT 2005 in Leiden the same year.
Played on a 5x5 board, each player has six cubes or stones numbered one to six, initially placed on the diagonal opposed six corner squares, ordered by their players discretion or randomly [5]. The object of the game is to either get an own stone to the opponent's corner, or to remove all of the opponent's stones. A move consists of rolling a six-sided dice to determine a stone to move by its number, and pushing that stone one step forward in one of the three directions closer to opponent's corner. Own and opponent stones on the target square are (self) captured and removed from the board. If the matching stone is no longer on the board, the player choose a remaining one whose number is either next-highest or next-lowest. The fewer stones, the more "mobile" they are. With only one stone (German: "Ein Stein") left, rolling the dice is no longer necessary. This feature along with Albert Einstein's quote "God doesn't play with dice" [6][7][8] was eponym of the game [9].
a turn-based two-player board game of chance and strategy, designed by Ingo Althöfer in 2004. It was the official game of an exhibition about Albert Einstein in Germany during the World Year of Physics 2005 [1]. Ingo introduced his game to computer chess programmers at the IPCCC 2005 in Paderborn, where it was immediately played with enthusiasm between rounds [2] [3], further spread and played during the ICT 2005 in Leiden the same year.
Table of Contents
Rules
Played on a 5x5 board, each player has six cubes or stones numbered one to six, initially placed on the diagonal opposed six corner squares, ordered by their players discretion or randomly [5]. The object of the game is to either get an own stone to the opponent's corner, or to remove all of the opponent's stones. A move consists of rolling a six-sided dice to determine a stone to move by its number, and pushing that stone one step forward in one of the three directions closer to opponent's corner. Own and opponent stones on the target square are (self) captured and removed from the board. If the matching stone is no longer on the board, the player choose a remaining one whose number is either next-highest or next-lowest. The fewer stones, the more "mobile" they are. With only one stone (German: "Ein Stein") left, rolling the dice is no longer necessary. This feature along with Albert Einstein's quote "God doesn't play with dice" [6] [7] [8] was eponym of the game [9].Computer Ewn
Ewn Computer bots usually apply some sort of Monte-Carlo tree search. Since 2011, EinStein würfelt nicht! is played at the Computer Olympiad, also with some computer chess programmers competing with their own Ewn bots - Richard Pijl and Johannes Zwanzger [10]. In Tilburg 2011, Theo van der Storm's former Connect6 program MeinStein [11], written in Java, won the Gold medal, operated by Jan Krabbenbos.Computer Olympiads
Photos
ICT 2005
Tilburg 2011
Publications
2009
2010 ...
2015 ...
Forum Posts
Ein Stein Wuerfelt nicht (One stone doesn't throw dice) by Theo van der Storm, CCC, March 03, 2005
Rules of "EinStein wuerfelt nicht" by Ingo Althöfer, CCC, March 05, 2005
External Links
Tournaments
Online Play
References
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