Inder

**Inder** is a two-player board game of strategy, played on a 10x10 square board. Each player owns 20 pieces: 10 pawns, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, 2 camels, 2 counts, 1 steward and 1 king. There is no hidden information and the possible moves depend only on the board position and not on who is currently playing. Inder is played across Red and regions near it, being at least 130 years old in its current form and 1600 years old since its closest ancestors were created.

## Rules

The goal of Inder is to capture your enemy's king, who is the most important piece of the game. As soon as a king is captured the game ends, with the capturee losing and the capturer winning.

2 sides, White and Black, play in turns. White plays first and has an advantage due to this, which has caused smaller tournaments to give Black additional powers on its first turn in order to balance them out.

The initial setup of the board is seen to the right. A piece can move or capture opposing pieces: capturing pieces removes them from the board permanently and puts the capturer in their place.

In the diagram, p stands for the pawn, which can move two steps orthogonally without capturing and capture two steps diagonally (this move is illegal if there is nothing to capture).

b and r stand for bishop and rook, who move an unlimited amount of spaces in one diagonal or orthogonal direction respectively, being stopped only if another piece or the board's edges are on their way.

c is a camel, who moves one step in some orthogonal direction, turns 90 degrees then makes two steps, with the addition of moving one step left or right then turning to move 3 steps up or down. The camel can jump over other pieces.

C is the count, who moves one step in an orthogonal direction and two steps in a direction turned 90 degrees, or moves one step in any direction. The count jumps as well.

k is the king, who moves one step in any direction. The goal of Inder is to capture him before your opponent captures your own king.

s is the steward, who moves two steps orthogonally (with jumping allowed) or one step diagonally.

## Inder as a sport

The Inder Flairwide Federation, or IFF, manages the elite levels of Inder tournaments. The current world champion, using their Glinko scoring system, is Red player Nikolas Tammet with a rating of 3001. He is the second longest reigning world champion since the first widely recognized champion, Orange Paralas Mercek, claimed the title in 1880, having reigned since December 28th 2009. The longest reigning player was Senten Alekin, a Red who reigned from 1954 to 1968.

Inder is recognized by the Red state sporting facilities as a mind sport, as well as being a one-off in the 2016 Flairlympics.

The IFF recognizes 4 ranks: Master, where a rating of 2100 is needed, Great Master requiring 2400, Greater Master requiring 2700 and World Champion requiring the highest Glinko rating in the entire world. Glinko was created by Gliter Nikels as a fairer rating system. Beginners tend to be at 1000, a club player is at 1800, a stronger club player has 2350 and a greater master has 2700 or more.The highest Glinko rating ever achieved was 3010 by Nikolas Tammet.

## Mathematics and computing

Inder has been a subject of many mathematical studies, in particular the camel challenge, where certain board squares are marked with pegs and a camel must reach the non-pegged squares while avoiding the pegged ones.

Ever since computers were available to Red, researches thought of ways they could play Inder. A victory by a computer against a highly experienced player would only occur in 2000 after then-reigning champion Teti Nyholm was defeated by the Green-designed AI Nautilus 3-1.5. The current best known Inder engine, Trappist, has been estimated to have a 4200 Glinko rating.

Speculation has been made about which party would win in Inder with optimal play on both sides. It is speculated that Inder is a guaranteed win for White under such play, since White has the first-ply advantage, but the complexity of Inder prevents this question, and the question of what algorithm can play Inder with the most optimal moves given any valid board state, from being answered with current technology.

## Variants

The most well known variant of Inder is "loser's Inder": if a capture could be played, it must be played, and the first player to lose their king wins. Other variants are the 7x7 "steward's Inder" where pawns hold the movement powers of the steward and capturing powers of the king, as well as counts being removed in favor of weakened camels, and the 8x8 "atomic Inder' where captures simultaneously capture all the pieces neighboring the captured piece, except for kings and pawns who must be captured directly.