Abstract Strategy Games
An abstract strategy game is a strategy game that minimizes luck and does not rely on a theme. Almost all abstract strategy games will conform to the strictest definition of: a gameboard, card, or tile game in which there is no hidden information, no non-deterministic elements (such as shuffled cards or dice rolls), and (usually) two players or teams taking a finite number of alternating turns.
Many of the world's classic board games, including chess, checkers and draughts, Go, xiangqi, shogi, Reversi, and most mancala variants, fit into this category. Play is sometimes said to resemble a series of puzzles the players pose to each other. As J. Mark Thompson wrote in his article "Defining the Abstract":
There is an intimate relationship between such games and puzzles: every board position presents the player with the puzzle, What is the best move?, which in theory could be solved by logic alone. A good abstract game can therefore be thought of as a "family" of potentially interesting logic puzzles, and the play consists of each player posing such a puzzle to the other. Good players are the ones who find the most difficult puzzles to present to their opponents.
Read more about Abstract Strategy Games: Definition, Comparison, Champions
Famous quotes containing the words abstract, strategy and/or games:
“Alice grown lazy, mammoth but not fat,
Declines upon her lost and twilight age;
Above in the dozing leaves the grinning cat
Quivers forever with his abstract rage....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The best strategy in life is diligence.”
—Chinese proverb.
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)