Waterdancer -

** Probably, the easiest way to set it up would be to put in a remove stone(s) feature similar to the undo at Dweebo's, i.e. asking opponent if it was acceptable to remove stones at certain locations from the board. **

Oh no, I think that that would be much too confusing! Now somebody gets a 5 in a row and then it isn't realized that certain stones should be poofed. Or somebody misses that stones should be poofed in more than one direction. Not good.

I think that the stone removals whether they be captured or poofed should be able to be programmed reasonably easily. But like you said, the hard part will be making a program that plays it correctly with good strategy.

I have an alternative Poof Pente variant to ALL of this that would make things MUCH easier. Keep the same rules but do NOT allow Poof moves! In other words, playing into a Poof is like moving into check in Chess and it is simply an illegal move! This will make some intersections completely off limits to one or even BOTH players unless some other stones that are 'bracketing' the unallowed intersection are captured!

Potentially THAT could be a LOT easier to understand and program and for that reason, many more players will go for it! It's MUCH easier for people to understand disallowed moves like a move into check in chess than it is to understand 'poofed' moves. I think that this 'poofing' is what will confuse people. If there are other games where you can 'blow yourself up', i.e. poof yourself, without blowing up any of your opponent's pieces, I am not aware of them.


Gary