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Tak (game)
''Tak'' is a two-player abstract strategy game designed by James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss and published by Cheapass Games in 2016. In ''Tak'', players aim to connect two opposite edges of the board with pieces called "stones", and create a road. To accomplish this, players take turns placing their own stones and building a road while blocking and capturing their opponent's stones to hinder their efforts at the same. A player "captures" a stone by stacking one of their pieces on top of the opponent's. These stacks can then be moved as a whole or broken up and moved across several spaces on the board. The vertical stacking and unstacking of stones gives a three dimensional element to the game play. Upon its release, ''Tak'' received positive reviews. Terminology There are several common terms used to describe different aspects of Tak and its states of play. Many of the terms are unofficial and, while proposed or commonly accepted among Tak players, are not published in offi ...
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James Ernest
James Ernest is an American game designer and juggler, best known as the owner and lead designer of Cheapass Games. Career Prior to founding Cheapass Games, Ernest worked as a juggler at various venues, including Camlann Medieval Village, and as a freelancer with Wizards of the Coast. He also worked for Carbonated Games. He has also created games for other publishers including Rio Grande Games and WizKids. In 2005, Paizo Publishing created Titanic Games with Ernest and Mike Selinker. Ernest's games include ''Unexploded Cow'', ''Kill Doctor Lucky'', ''The Big Idea'' and the game originally known as ''Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond'' (that game was eventually renamed after complaints from the owners of the Bond franchise). He has had success with Kickstarter, successfully crowdfunding games like a new version of ''Unexploded Cow'' and ''Get Lucky'' (which takes the concept and core mechanics of ''Kill Doctor Lucky'' and adapts it as a card game), among others. Ernest wrote, produce ...
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Nonprofit Organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in contrast with an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a Profit (accounting), profit for its owners. A nonprofit is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. An array of organizations are nonprofit, including some political organizations, schools, business associations, churches, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be Tax exemption, tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an entity may incorporate as a nonprofit entity without securing tax-exempt status. Key aspects of nonprofits are accountability, trustworth ...
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Abstract Strategy Games
Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information. For example, Go is a pure abstract strategy game since it fulfills all three criteria; chess and related games are nearly so but feature a recognizable theme of ancient warfare; and Stratego is borderline since it is deterministic, loosely based on 19th-century Napoleonic warfare, and features concealed information. Definition Combinatorial games have no randomizers such as dice, no simultaneous movement, nor hidden information. Some games that do have these elements are sometimes classified as abstract strategy games. (Games such as '' Continuo'', Octiles, '' Can't Stop'', and Sequence, could be considered abstract strategy games, despite having a luck or bluffing element.) A smaller category of abstract strategy games manages to ...
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Mancala
The mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces. Versions of the game date back past the 3rd century and evidence suggests the game existed in Ancient Egypt. It is among the oldest known games to still be widely played today. Names and variants The name is a classification or type of game, rather than any specific game. Some of the most popular mancala games (concerning distribution area, the numbers of players and tournaments, and publications) are: * Ayoayo, played by the Yoruba people in Nigeria; similar to Oware * Alemungula or gebeta (ገበጣ)– played in Sudan and Ethiopia. * Ali Guli Mane or Pallanguzhi – played in Southern India. * Bao la Kiswahili – played in most of East Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Malawi, as we ...
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Hex (board Game)
Hex is a two player abstract strategy board game in which players attempt to connect opposite sides of a rhombus-shaped board made of hexagonal cells. Hex was invented by mathematician and poet Piet Hein in 1942 and later rediscovered and popularized by John Nash. It is traditionally played on an 11×11 rhombus board, although 13×13 and 19×19 boards are also popular. The board is composed of hexagons called ''cells'' or ''hexes''. Each player is assigned a pair of opposite sides of the board, which they must try to connect by alternately placing a stone of their color onto any empty hex. Once placed, the stones are never moved or removed. A player wins when they successfully connect their sides together through a chain of adjacent stones. Draws are impossible in Hex due to the topology of the game board. Despite the simplicity of its rules, the game has deep strategy and sharp tactics. It also has profound mathematical underpinnings. The game was first published under the ...
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Emergo (board Game)
Emergo is an abstract strategy game created by Christian Freeling and Ed van Zon in 1986. It belongs to the "stacking" category of games, or column checkers, along with Bashni and Lasca. The name comes from the motto of the Dutch province of Zeeland: ''Luctor et emergo'' meaning: "I wrestle and emerge". The goal of the game is to capture all of the opponents pieces similar to checkers/draughts. Emergo, and all column checkers, differ from most draughts variants because of their unique method of capture. A opponent's piece is added to the capturing player's column rather than being removed. Men can be recaptured from an opponent later on in the game. Rules Emergo has two players, Black and White. A 'piece' is defined as a column of one or more ''men''. Columns may consist of all white pieces, all black pieces, white with black ''prisoners'', or black with white ''prisoners''. The top man is called the ''cap'', with all the pieces underneath as ''prisoners''. The color of the cap ...
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Connection Game
A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more endpoints, completing a closed loop, or connecting all of one's pieces so they are adjacent to each other. Connection games typically have simple rules, but complex strategies. They have minimal components and may be played as board games, computer games, or even paper-and-pencil games. In many connection games, the goal is to connect two opposite sides of the board. In these games, players take turns placing or moving pieces until one player has a continuous line of pieces connecting their two sides of the playing area. Hex, TwixT, and ''PÜNCT'' are typical examples of this type of game. History According to Browne, ''Hex'' (developed independently by the mathematicians Piet Hein and John Nash in the 1940s) is considered to be the first connection game, although earlier games involving co ...
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Komidashi
in the game of Go are points added to the score of the player with the white stones as compensation for playing second. The value of Black's first-move advantage is generally considered to be between 5 and 7 points by the end of the game. Standard is 6.5 points under the Japanese and Korean rules; under Chinese, Ing and AGA rules standard is 7.5 points; under New Zealand rules standard is 7 points. typically applies only to games where both players are evenly ranked. In the case of a one-rank difference, the stronger player will typically play with the white stones and players often agree on a simple 0.5-point to break a tie ( ) in favour of white, or no at all. is the more complete Japanese language term. The Chinese term is tiē mù () and the Korean term is deom (). Efforts have been made to determine the value of for boards much smaller than the standard 19x19 grid for go, such as 7x7. When introducing Environmental Go, Elwyn Berlekamp made a broad generalisation of ...
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AlphaZero
AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero. On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team released a preprint introducing AlphaZero, which within 24 hours of training achieved a superhuman level of play in these three games by defeating world-champion programs Stockfish, elmo, and the three-day version of AlphaGo Zero. In each case it made use of custom tensor processing units (TPUs) that the Google programs were optimized to use. AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks, all in parallel, with no access to opening books or endgame tables. After four hours of training, DeepMind estimated AlphaZero was playing chess at a higher Elo rating than Stockfish 8; after nine hours of training, the algorithm defeated Stockf ...
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Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Leiden for its Siege of Leiden, defence against Spanish attacks during the Eighty Years' War. As the oldest institution of higher education in the Netherlands, it enjoys a reputation across Europe and the world. Known for its historic foundations and emphasis on the social sciences, the university came into particular prominence during the Dutch Golden Age, when scholars from around Europe were attracted to the Dutch Republic due to its climate of intellectual tolerance and Leiden's international reputation. During this time, Leiden became the home to individuals such as René Descartes, Rembrandt, Christiaan Huygens, Hugo Grotius, Baruch Spinoza and Baron d'Holbach. The university has seven academic f ...
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Non-player Character
A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer (instead of a player) that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence. Role-playing games In a traditional tabletop role-playing game such as ''Dungeons & Dragons'', an NPC is a character portrayed by the gamemaster (GM). While the player characters (PCs) form the narrative's protagonists, non-player characters can be thought of as the "supporting cast" or "extras" of a roleplaying narrative. Non-player characters populate the fictional world of the game, and can fill any role not occupied by a player character. Non-player ...
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Free-to-play
Free-to-play (F2P or FtP) video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying or do not require paying to continue playing. Free-to-play is distinct from traditional commercial software, which requires a payment before using the game or service. It is also separate from freeware games, which are entirely costless. Free-to-play's model is sometimes derisively referred to as free-to-start due to not being entirely free. Free to play games have also been widely criticized as “pay-to-win”— that is, that players can generally pay to obtain competitive or power advantages over other players. There are several kinds of free-to-play business models. The most common is based on the freemium software model, in which users are granted access to a fully functional game but are incentivised to pay microtransactions to access additional content. Sometimes the content is entirely blocked without payment; other times it requires immens ...
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