Гекс (Hex)

Как играть

1. Red goes first. On your turn, place one stone on any empty cell — you never move or remove a stone afterwards.
2. Right after the first stone, the second player gets one choice: take that stone as their own and swap colours, or answer normally. This is the swap rule, and it exists because moving first is otherwise an advantage.
3. Cells touch on six sides, not four — the two diagonals that count are the ones running from lower-left to upper-right.
4. The first player to form an unbroken chain of their own stones from one of their sides to the other wins immediately.

Как победить

Connect your two edges with an unbroken chain of your own stones — top to bottom for red, left to right for blue. Hex has no draw: when the board fills up, exactly one player is always connected, which is a proved fact about the game rather than a design choice.

Советы

• Two stones a knight-ish step apart with two empty cells between them (a "bridge") are already as good as connected — if your opponent cuts one link, you take the other.
• Every stone you place blocks your opponent as much as it helps you, because your two directions cross theirs. There is no purely defensive move and no purely offensive one.

Частые вопросы

Do I need to install anything, or pay?

No. The board on this page runs in the browser, free, with no sign-up, and it keeps working once the page has loaded even if you lose signal.

What is the swap rule, and why does it exist?

Hex is a first-player win with perfect play — that is proved, though nobody knows the winning line on a full-size board. The swap cancels it out: whoever opens has to pick a move that is neither too strong (or it gets taken) nor too weak, which makes the opening a real decision instead of a free advantage.

Can a game of Hex end in a draw?

Never. Fill the board with any mix of red and blue stones at all and exactly one colour will have a crossing chain — the two goals cut across each other, so blocking your opponent completely is the same thing as connecting yourself.

Which board size should we use?

11×11 is the standard size and the one tournaments use. 9×9 is here because eleven columns on a narrow phone leaves each cell too small to tap reliably — the game is identical, the games are just shorter.

Когда заходит лучше всего

Передавайте один телефон и играйте в такие моменты.

• Just the two of youHead-to-head while you wait.
• Anywhere, offlineNo wifi, no signal? No problem.

Другие игры

• РеверсиReversi
• Четыре в рядFour in a Row
• Мастер чиселMaster Number
• Крестики-ноликиTic-Tac-Toe