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Each player trys to connect the two borders with a chain
of red or blue cells by coloring empty cells.
The game can never end with a draw. When all cells have been colored, there must exists either a red chain or a blue chain.
The player who moves first has a big advantage. In order to compense this, there is often used
the so-called 'swap rule'. After the first move, the second player is allowed to swap the sides.
In order to apply the swap rule click again on the cell which was selected in the first move.
Game History - Hex Board Game
Hex was invented by the Danish mathematician and poet Piet Hein, who introduced
the game in 1942 at the Niels Bohr Institute. The same year Hex appeared in the
Danish newspaper Politiken under the name Polygon. Hein introduced the game to the
readers on December 26, 1942 and during the following four months gave them a
problem each day to begin with - eventually two days a week, on Wednesdays and
Saturdays. The solution would always appear in the following column. It was
independently invented by mathematician John Nash in 1947 at Princeton University.
In 1952, Parker Brothers marketed a version. They called their version Hex, and
the name stuck. Hex has the simplest rules of almost any game: connect your color
edges with a path of tokens of your color. There is also a "swap rule" (also
known as a pie rule) which compensates for the inherent advantage of the first
player.
There are a number of resources for Hex on the internet, including several
real-time servers. If you want to play face-to-face, used Hex sets are
occasionally available, and you can also make your own set. A Battlemat with 1"
hexes can be cut into a 15x15 rhombus grid. Standard Go stones also work well for
this board. It is also playable as a pencil-and-paper game, like the 3M Paper Game
version.