|||
|||
|
Havannah Strategy
A very basic property of Havannah is this: of all games that
can end in a draw, it must have the smallest margin. It's easy to construct
a drawn position, but in twenty years of play, there are no recorded draws.
There are two immediate consequences:
- The first player to complete a ring, bridge or fork, is
the winner, so white has a first move advantage, and it is not diminished by a drawing margin.
- A sound defensive strategy will, a draw being no option, eventually turn
into an attack all by itself!
The first move advantage has never been a problem on the current board size,
because the impact of strategical and tactical errors outweighs it substantially.
The second property was not immediately obvious in the
first year of the game's existence, when it was extensively played at the University of
Twente and its games club 'Fanatic': it took Roelof Moll, a local Chess player who had played
only for a few months, to point it out. He started winning consistently by following his
Chess instinct and taking the center. He didn't care for speed, he cared for safety. His
reasoning was that it doesn't matter how 'fast' a group threatens to connect, if it's dead.
Cutting the opponent's groups from above (that is: from the center) limiting their options to
at most two sides and a corner, he proved that all our previous strategies were in dire need of
reconsideration. From his contribution came the concepts of snake strategy,
with the emphasis on speed, and spider strategy, with the emphasis on safety.
It gave rise to the
dilemma, illustrated here in a nutshell, but actually pervading Havannah in all
strategical and tactical aspects. Appoaching its strategical implications would result
in actual opening theory, which is too immense a subject matter to be part of this tutor.
The Frame
The main strategic goal in Havannah is is the establishment of a
frame, a connection aiming at a ring, bridge or fork, that, though still
incomplete, cannot be broken by the opponent. The last property is essential. With
safety taken care of, it gives rise to two simple strategic truths:
- Attacking a frame pushes it right into victory! The only defense is:
having a faster frame, or at least threatening a faster connection in the process of making one.
This may seem like 'kicking in an open door', but even experienced players do not always
recognize a frame as such, until they discover that their attempts to cut or block were in fact
counterproductive and would better have been left undone. In short: only defend if
it can be defended and only cut when it can be cut.
- Balanced games, that is: games that are not decided by tactical oversight,
will eventually take the character of a race. Assuming that both players
eventually frame (the alternative would be tactical oversight), both will engage in the
difficult process of counting.
The faster player will make it a race without bothering about the opponent other than to
answer local tactical threats.
In the process of establishing a frame, ring, bridge and fork play
very different roles.
  
|