Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 13:51:53 +0000 (NZD) From: W.Taylor@math.canterbury.ac.nz Subject: Re: "Water-wheels" - a fascinating duality. To: rusin@math.niu.edu ... >sci.logic. Have you got copies of those posts? No; there was just one. It was a math problem rather than a games oriented post. He was just looking at circular arrays of cells of stones, (a la wari), and allowing the (one) player to move and sew around from any pile, like wari, but ALSO including sewing to the emptied pile. He was wondering if it would be possible to get from any pattern to any other pattern, given enough moves. He had some obvious partial reults, (e.g. true if less seeds than cells), but nothing really exciting. Pity. ... >wrote a computer simulation... hearing of anything more sophisticated Quite a lot has been done! There was even an international computer tournament! (3 entries) It was on rec.games.abstract recently. You should wtrite to Victor Allis - he was the first in the computer wari filed; I played against his program a while ago. He is at... victor@cs.vu.nl ...or... allis@CS.RULIMBURG.NL ...(not sure which is best!) ============================================================================== Date: Sun, 29 Oct 95 19:05:31 MET From: Victor Allis To: rusin@math.niu.edu Subject: Re: Mancala In your letter dated Fri, 27 Oct 95 14:45:40 CDT, you wrote: > >In a recent correspondence with Bill Taylor he mentioned you might have >some information about computer versions of the game Mancala, or perhaps >a technical analysis of algorithms. Do you have any such material >handy, or know where I could get it? (I enjoyed the game and wrote a >pedestrian program to allow playing in on a computer, but I really >know nothing deep about strategies -- or about programming, for that matter. >You know how mathematicians are :-).) You may want to download my Ph.D. thesis. In chapter 2, I describe pn-search and its application to Awari, one of the Mancala variants. If you have questions afterwards, please ask. Best regards, Victor. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~victor/thesis.html ============================================================================== From: lruss@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract Subject: Book on Mancala Games Date: 15 Dec 95 10:00:36 EST While my book MANCALA GAMES (originally published in 1984) is between editions, I'm making available a paperbound photocopy. The original book has 110 pages, and contains the rules for well over 100 different versions of mancala. Mancala is the generic name given to a class of board games played throughout the world (but mainly on the African continent). The games are generally played on wooden boards which have two, three, or four rows of holes carved into them. Each game begins with counters arranged in the holes according to the rules of the game being played. Rules for moves, captures, and winning also vary from game to game. If you're interested, please send $13.93 ($12+$1.93 for postage) to me at Larry Russ 613 Hudson Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 If you have any questions, feel free to send me e-mail. Larry