Y

Copyright (c) 1953 Charles Titus and Craige Schensted

The game is played on an empty 10x10 triangular hexboard. Each player drop a stone into an empty cell.

GOAL - The game is won by the first player to build a chain of stones of his color which connects the three sides of the playing field. CORNER - A corner cell counts as belonging to two sides. SWAP - After the 1st move, the 2nd player has the right to swap positions. This rule prevents the 1st player  from playing to the center of the field at the first move and getting in this way a strong advantage.

 

An example Black has a winning position. White cannot stop Black from winning in 4 turns.

There is a ZRF to play Y with Zillions. Check also Hex and Poly-Y.

A variant is Caeth Y where players take a little longer to control each cell: [from www.gamerz.net/pbmserv/caethy.html]
 

                            1- *
                           2- / \
                          3- *-.-*
                         4- / \ / \
                        5- *-.-*-.-*
                       6- / \ / \ / \
                      7- *-.-*-.-*-.-*
                     8- / \ / \ / \ / \
                    9- *-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*
                  10- / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
                 11- *-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*
                12- / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
               13- *-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*
              14- / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
             15- *-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*
            16- / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
           17- *-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*-.-*
                \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
                 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q
      

Players alternate turns, capturing an edge between two vertices on each of their turns. When a player controls half or more of the edges leading into a vertex, they gain control of that vertex. (Specifically in Caeth Y: control of one edge into a corner vertex, two edges into a side vertex, or three edges into a centre vertex are enough for control.) As in Y, the goal is to make a connected chain of vertices that touches all three sides of the board; the three corners count as members of both sides to which they are adjacent. Note that the connected chain is a chain of vertices, not of edges. The second player may utilize the swap rule if they so desire.

Y is very suitable to use with progressive mutators. The 122*, the 123* and the slow 122344566788... sequences produce very nice games, if we add a restriction: every dropped stone from the same sequence must belong to different groups.