page_title: Abalone (board game)
section_title: Avoiding draws
hierarchical_section_title: Abalone (board game) / Gameplay / Avoiding draws
context_page_description: Abalone is a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Lévi in 1987. Players are represented by opposing black and white marbles on a hexagonal board with the objective of pushing six of the opponent's marbles off the edge of the board.
  The game is arranged similar to Chinese checkers but without starting spaces and with a "moat" around the edge of the board. Players start with 14 marbles instead of 10, there are only two "colors", and the starting arrangement is different. But the game also uses a hexagon with marbles and 5 pits on each edge.
  Abalone was published in 1990 and has sold more than 4.5 million units. The year it was published it received one of the first Mensa Select awards in New York, New York. It is currently sold in more than thirty countries.
context_section_description: The dynamics of the basic game may have one serious flaw: it seems that a good but conservative player can set up his or her marbles in a defensive wedge and ward off all attacks indefinitely. An attacker may try to outflank this wedge or lure it into traps, but such advances are often more dangerous to the attacker than the defender. Thus, from the starting position, it takes little skill and no imagination to avoid losing, and nothing in the rules prevents games from being interminable.
  Because it is boring for games to be drawn out indefinitely, serious Abalone players tacitly agree to play aggressively. A player who forms a defensive wedge and makes no attempt to attack is likely to be a novice who might lose anyway. Nevertheless, there remains the possibility of any competent player bringing the game to a standstill and successfully avoiding losing, even to a championship-level player.
  There are several possible "solutions". First, in tournaments, a judge may penalize a player for playing defensively. This solution is somewhat unsatisfactory, given that a judge may not always be present, and that "defensive play" is subjective.
  Second, several variations of the rules have been developed for the same board and marbles.  None of the variations has the same appealing simplicity of the original.
  The third, and perhaps best, alternative starting positions have been designed to make the formation of stalemate wedges less likely.  Experiments are still underway to find an opening position which neither devolves to a draw nor gives too great an advantage to the first player. One popular attempt are the Marguerite or Daisy positions, two versions of which are displayed in the center and to the right.
  Another option is to create a "turn limit" where if no marble has been knocked off the board by turn 15, whoever has made the most progress towards the center line wins. This encourages an aggressive strategy of moving forward and often the rule will not come into play.
caption: Belgian daisy starting position