FOUR FIELD KONO

Traditional - Korea

This game is played on the following 4x4 square board:

 
  • TURNS - At each turn, each player must capture an enemy stone.
    • A stone is captured by orthogonally jumping with a friendly stone over an adjacent friendly stone, and landing over an enemy stone on the immediate next cell (so all three stones must be in the same orthogonal line).
    • When there are no captures available, the current player moves a friendly stone to adjacent empty cell.
  • GOAL - Wins the player that stalemates the adversary (i.e., leaves no valid move).
 
An initial move

Black started by jumping a3 to c3 over the black stone at b3. The white stone at c3 was captured.

An example

White's turn. If he chooses the marked stone to jump over the white stone at b3 to capture the black stone at b4, he wins the game: Black will not have valid moves to continue.

Damian Walker remarks: Four Field Kono (a.k.a. nei-pat-ko-no) is shown in Culin's 1895 work "Korean Games", and in various works by R. C. Bell. Five Field Kono (o-pat-kono) is also listed in the same Culin work from 1895, and in works by Bell and Parlett.

I wish to thank Damian for noting that the non-capture rule was missing on the previous version of this webpage.

Culin's book Korean games : with notes on the corresponding games of China and Japan (1895) can be found here.