Fanorona () is a

strategy Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the " ...

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a co ...

for two players. The game is indigenous to

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...

Rules

Fanorona has three standard versions: Fanoron-Telo, Fanoron-Dimy, and Fanoron-Tsivy. The difference between these variants is the size of board played on. Fanoron-Telo is played on a 3×3 board and the difficulty of this game can be compared to the game of tic-tac-toe. Fanoron-Dimy is played on a 5×5 board and Fanoron-Tsivy is played on a 9×5 board—Tsivy being the most popular. The Tsivy board consists of lines and intersections that create a grid with 5 rows and 9 columns subdivided diagonally to form part of the

tetrakis square tiling In geometry, the tetrakis square tiling is a tiling of the Euclidean plane. It is a square tiling with each square divided into four isosceles right triangles from the center point, forming an infinite arrangement of lines. It can also be formed ...

of the plane. A line represents the path along which a stone can move during the game. There are weak and strong intersections. At a weak intersection it is only possible to move a stone horizontally and vertically, while on a strong intersection it is also possible to move a stone diagonally. A stone can only move from one intersection to an adjacent intersection. Black and white pieces, twenty-two each, are arranged on all points but the center. The objective of the game is to capture all the opponents pieces. The game is a draw if neither player succeeds in this. Players alternate turns, starting with White. * There are two kinds of moves: non-capturing and capturing. A non-capturing move is called a ''paika'' move. * A paika move consists of moving one stone along a line to an adjacent intersection. * Capturing moves are obligatory and have to be played in preference to paika moves. * Capturing implies removing one or more pieces of the opponent, in one of two ways: ** Approach—moving the capturing stone to a point adjacent to an opponent's stone, which must be on the continuation of the capturing stone's movement line. ** Withdrawal—the capturing stone moves from a point adjacent to the opponent's stone, away from the stone along the continuation of the line between them. * When an opponent stone is captured, all opponent pieces in line beyond that stone (as long as there is no interruption by an empty point or an own stone) are captured as well. * An approach capture and a withdrawal capture cannot be made at the same time – the player must choose one or the other. * As in

checkers Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...

, the capturing piece is allowed to continue making successive captures, with these restrictions: ** The piece is not allowed to arrive at the same position twice. ** It is not permitted to move twice consecutively in the same direction (first to make a withdrawal capture, and then to make an approach capture) as part of a capturing sequence. * However, unlike in checkers, continuing the capturing sequence is optional. * The game ends when one player captures all stones of the opponent. If neither player can achieve this—for instance if the game reaches a state where neither player can attack the other without overly weakening their own position—then the game is a draw.

History

Fanorona is very popular in Madagascar. According to one version of a popular legend, an astrologer had advised King

Ralambo Ralambo was the ruler of the Kingdom of Imerina in the central Highlands region of Madagascar from 1575 to 1612. Ruling from Ambohidrabiby, Ralambo expanded the realm of his father, Andriamanelo, and was the first to assign the name of Imerina ...

to choose his successor by, while his sons were away from the capital, feigning sickness and urging their return; his kingdom would be given to the first son who returned home to him. When the king's messenger reached Ralambo's elder son Prince Andriantompokoindrindra, he was playing fanorona and trying to win a ''telo noho dimy'' (3 against 5) situation, one that is infamously difficult to resolve. As a result, his younger brother Prince

Andrianjaka Andrianjaka reigned over the Kingdom of Imerina in the central highlands region of Madagascar from around 1612 to 1630. Despite being the younger of King Ralambo's two sons, Andrianjaka succeeded to the throne on the basis of his strength of char ...

was the first to arrive and inherited the throne. Fanorona inspired Christian Freeling's draughts variant Bushka, which in turn inspired the game

Dameo Dameo is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Christian Freeling in 2000. It is a variant of the game draughts (or checkers) and is played on an 8×8 checkered gameboard. Game rules Dameo is played on an 8×8 checkerboard ...

Analysis

Using 10,000 games with

Alpha-beta pruning Alphabeta is an Israeli musical group. Alphabeta or Alpha Beta may also refer to: *The Greek alphabet, from ''Alpha'' (Αα) and ''Beta'' (Ββ), the first two letters *Alpha Beta, a former chain of Californian supermarkets *Alpha and beta anomers ...

players, the

game-tree complexity Combinatorial game theory has several ways of measuring game complexity. This article describes five of them: state-space complexity, game tree size, decision complexity, game-tree complexity, and computational complexity. Measures of game comple ...

and

state-space complexity A state space is the set of all possible configurations of a system. It is a useful abstraction for reasoning about the behavior of a given system and is widely used in the fields of artificial intelligence and game theory. For instance, the to ...

can be computed. Fanorona has a

of ~10⁴⁶ and a

of ~10²¹. In 2007, the game of Fanorona and smaller variants were solved weakly as a draw under perfect play. Both the moves f2-e3A and d3-e3A lead to a draw.

References

External links

*{{bgg, 4386, Fanorona Abstract strategy games Traditional board games African games Solved games