Clobber is an

abstract strategy game 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. ...

invented in 2001 by

combinatorial game theorists Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many app ...

Michael H. Albert, J.P. Grossman and Richard Nowakowski. It has subsequently been studied by

Elwyn Berlekamp Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.Contributors, ''IEEE Transactions on Information Theory'' 42, #3 (May 1996), p. 1048. DO10.1 ...

and

Erik Demaine Erik D. Demaine (born February 28, 1981) is a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former child prodigy. Early life and education Demaine was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to artist sculptor Martin ...

among others. Since 2005, it has been one of the events in the

Computer Olympiad The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which computer programs compete against each other. For many games, the Computer Olympiads are an opportunity to claim the "world's best computer player" title. First contested in 1989, the majori ...

Details

Clobber is best played with two players and takes an average of 15 minutes to play. It is suggested for ages 8 and up. It is typically played on a rectangular white and black checkerboard. Players take turns to move one of their own pieces onto an orthogonally adjacent opposing piece, removing it from the game. The winner of the game is the player who makes the last move (i.e. whose opponent cannot move). To start the game, each of the squares on the checkerboard is occupied by a stone. White stones are placed on the white squares and black stones on the black squares. To move, the player must pick up one of his or her own stones and "clobber" an opponent's stone on an adjacent square, either horizontally or vertically. Once the opponent's stone is clobbered, it must then be removed from the board and replaced by the stone that was moved. The player who, on their turn, is unable to move, loses the game.

Variants

In computational play (e.g.,

), clobber is generally played on a 10x10 board. There are also variations in the initial layout of the pieces. Another variant is ''Cannibal Clobber'', where a stone may not only capture stones of the opponent but also other stones of its owner. An advantage of Cannibal Clobber over Clobber is that a player may not only win, but win by a non-trivial margin. Cannibal Clobber was proposed in the summer of 2003 by Ingo Althoefer. Another variant, also proposed by Ingo Althoefer in 2015, is San Jego: Here the pieces ar not clobbered, but stacked to towers. Each tower belongs to the player with the piece on its top. At the end the player with the highest tower is declared winner. Draws are possible.

References

External links

*
Getting Clobbered
' article at ''

Science News ''Science News (SN)'' is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. History ''Science News'' has been published since 1 ...

'' * *
Clobber in the Olympiad
' Pictorial report on the Clobber competition in Tilburg 2011 Board games introduced in 2001 Combinatorial game theory Abstract strategy games {{board-game-stub