Kōnane is a two-player strategy board game from Hawaii which was invented by the ancient Hawaiian Polynesians. The game is played on a rectangular board and begins with black and white counters filling the board in an alternating pattern. Players then hop over one another's pieces, capturing them similar to checkers. The first player unable to capture is the loser.[1] [2]
Before contact with Europeans, the game was played using small pieces of white coral and black lava on a large carved rock which functioned as both the board and a table. The Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park has one of these stone gameboards on its premises.[3] The game is somewhat similar to draughts. Pieces hop over one another when capturing; however, the similarities end there. In draughts, one player's pieces are initially set up on one side of the board opposite the other player's pieces. In Kōnane, both players' pieces are intermixed in a checkered pattern of black and white occupying every square of the board.[2] Furthermore, in Kōnane, all moves are capturing moves, captures are made in an orthogonal direction (not diagonally), and in a multiple-capture move, the capturing piece may not change direction.[1] [4]
Kōnane has some resemblances to the games of Leap Frog, Fanorona and Main Chuki or Tjuki. In both Kōnane and Leap Frog, every square of the board is occupied by a playing piece in the beginning of the game, and the only legal moves (after the first turn) are orthogonal captures by the short leap method. However, there are significant differences in Kōnane and Leap Frog.
The game is played on a rectangular or square board. Pieces can be laid out in the beginning of the game in an alternating checkerboard pattern of two colors on top of a table, on the ground, or on any flat surface. Furthermore, the game can be generalized to any size geometrically.[4] In practice, square Kōnane boards can range from 6×6 to over 14×14.[5] Traditional rectangular board dimensions include 9×13, 14×17, and 13×20.[2] [4]
The game begins with all the pieces on the board (or table, ground, etc.) arranged in an alternating pattern.[2] [4] [5] Players decide which colors to play (black or white).
The player unable to make a capture is the loser; their opponent is the winner.[1] [2] [4] [5] It is impossible to draw in Kōnane, because one player eventually cannot perform a capture.
Hearn proved that Kōnane is PSPACE-complete with respect to the dimensions of the board, by a reduction from Constraint Logic.[6] [7] There have been some positive results for restricted configurations. Ernst[8] derives Combinatorial-Game-Theoretic values for several interesting positions. Chan and Tsai[9] analyze the 1 × n game, but even this version of the game is not yet solved. In the 2008 paper "Konane has infinite nim-dimension",[10] Carlos Pereira dos Santos and Jorge Nuna Silva showed that Kōnane contains all other combinatorial games.[11]
Brainvita, also called Peg Solitaire, is a game for one person, in which the rules of Kōnane are used to move clockwise in turns. The procedure and aim of the game are identical to the original.
. H. J. R. Murray . A History of Board-Games other than Chess . Reissued . Hacker Art Books Inc . 1978 . 97 . 0-87817-211-4.