How to Play Renju

https://www.renju.net/rules/

by fsnowdin • 2 years ago

66 18 2 years ago

tromp• 2 years ago

The page doesn't describe the rules that make Renju a more complicated game than plain 5-in-a-row, a.k.a. Gomoku.

First, Renju has the rule of forbidden moves to limit Black's advantage, something gomoku does not have. Second, Renju utilizes special opening rules to balance the starting positions of games [1].

Gomoku was solved in 1992 by Victor Allis as a 1st player win. A version called Free Renju was solved in 2001 as 1st player win. The standard Renju with modern opening rules such as Yamaguchi and Soosõrv-N has not been solved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renju

sltkr• 2 years ago

It does include those rules, just towards the end of the page. I do think it would have been clearer to mention that Renju is based on Gomoku upfront.

elijaht• 2 years ago

The page does cover forbidden moves, and in a later tutorial mentions the starting position

""" What you learned so far actually is not quite renju yet. The basic 5 in a row game is called gomoku. All the beginners start with learning gomoku at first, and after some time, they move on to renju. Renju is a bit more complex game, and there are more rules. While gomoku is just an easy family game, renju is a serious sport and there are even world championships in that game. Renju game was developed from from gomoku game by Japanese masters about 100 years ago. The reason why gomoku was not satisfying for players any more was the fact that the skillful first player (black) could always win the game. Additional rules had to be made to balance the game and give the white player more chance for resistance. The game with those balance rules is called RENJU. So, here are the three rules that make renju different from gomoku:

Black player is not allowed to make the 3x3 fork. Black player is not allowed to make the 4x4 fork. Black player is not allowed to make an overline (6 or more stones in a row). """

""" With the years of serious games and analyses by strong masters, it became evident that the forbidden moves alone are not sufficient enough to provide the balance in the game, black was still having the advantage. In order to give the best balance, there were developed some opening procedures that both players need to follow. Below is the list of those procedures.

The first player sets the opening pattern, consisting of two blacks and one white stone. The second player choose either black or white side. The player with white stones plays the 4th move. The player with black stone puts two choices of the 5th move on the board. The player with white stones removes one of the 5th moves, and plays the white stone - the 6th move """

anigbrowl• 2 years ago

Yes it does, you just stopped reading half way.

tantalor• 2 years ago

L.V. Allis, H.J. van den Herik, M.P.H. Huntjens, "Go-Moku Solved by New Search Techniques". AAAI 1993

http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/1993/FS-93-02/FS93-...

sand500• 2 years ago

For anyone looking to play online, the site has links to a few places and apps

https://www.renju.net/playrenju/

fsnowdin4• 2 years ago

From what I know, the phone apps have more players on it like Dr. Gomoku and Gomoku Quest. Despite the 'Gomoku' name, they're actually using Renju rules.

hnthrowaway03282• 2 years ago

In China it is called 五子棋, I used to play a lot with my friends on paper during class XD

ngcc_hk• 2 years ago

Actually it is not. That is the improved version of it with additional rules to try to avoid black always win.

hnthrowaway03282• 2 years ago

Oh this is really nice. Sorry I will take a deeper dive.

fsnowdin4• 2 years ago

That's the vanilla Gomoku / 五目並べ without limitations for Black. The Renju version is called 連珠 in Japan.

deegles• 2 years ago

Can you play it with a regular Go board?

xandrius• 2 years ago

It's basically a simplified go from what I can tell, so it seems so.

handoflixue• 2 years ago

A Go board is 19x19, while this is 15x15, so you'd just need to avoid moves on the outermost 2 spaces

oniony• 2 years ago

Masking tape is your friend here.

fsnowdin4• 2 years ago

Pretty much. I don't think anyone is ever getting a dedicated Renju board.

praptak• 2 years ago

It's interesting that the rule added to limit Black's offensive capabilities gets gamified to give White some pretty sneaky offensive capabilities of their own (I'm referring to trapping forbidden points).

fsnowdin4• 2 years ago

Yeah, I didn't know until stumbling upon this tutorial that White could exploit Black's limitations. Even having known about Gomoku beforehand, the Renju rules were still difficult to wrap my head around.

How to Play Renju

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