Abstract strategy

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An abstract strategy game is a board game with perfect information, no chance, and (usually) two players. Many of the world's classic board games, including chess, go, and mancala, fit into this category. Play is sometimes said to resemble a series of puzzles the players pose to each other.

1 What counts as an abstract strategy game?
2 List of abstract strategy games
3 External links

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What counts as an abstract strategy game?

A purist's definition of an abstract strategy game requires that it cannot have random elements or hidden information. In practice, however, many games are commonly classed as abstract strategy games which do not strictly meet these criteria. Games such as Backgammon, Octiles, Can't Stop, Sequence and Mentalis have all been described as “abstract strategy” at some point or another, despite having a luck or bluffing element. The pragmatic definition seems to be that if a game is strategic and is abstract, the term “abstract strategy” should be applicable—this definition is unappealing to purists because the broader class of games falls clearly outside the scope of the techniques of theoretical analysis appropriate to “pure” abstract strategy games.

The analysis of a “pure” abstract strategy game tends to fall under combinatorial game theory. Abstract strategy games with hidden information, bluffing or simultaneous-move elements are better served by Von Neumann-Morgenstern game theory, while those with a component of luck may require probability theory incorporated into either of the above.

In some abstract strategy games there are multiple starting positions of which it is suggested that one be randomly determined: at the very least, in all conventional abstract strategy games a starting player needs to be chosen by some means extrinsic to the game. Some games, such as Arimaa and DVONN, have the players build the starting position in a separate initial phase which itself conforms strictly to abstract strategy game principles. However, most people would consider that although one is then starting each game from a different position, the game itself still has no luck element. Indeed, Bobby Fischer promoted randomizing the starting position of a game of chess in order to increase the game's dependence on thinking at the board, which is surely the chief object of an abstract strategy design.

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