How to Play Abalone

Abalone is one of the most beautiful board games you'll ever see. You could leave it on your coffee table and never play it, and it would probably still be worth the money. But that would be a shame, because you'd be missing out on a fascinating game that combines go with sumo wrestling. Sound crazy? Well, maybe it is. But the pieces are big enough that it should be easy to avoid losing your marbles.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Abalone board game
• An opponent

1. Place the board so that you and your opponent are sitting at opposite edges.

2. Take all the marbles of one color, and place them on the board to fill the two rows closest to you, as well as the center three spaces of the third row.

3. On your turn, move up to three of your marbles that are in a straight line one space in the same direction. In other words, you may push a small line of your marbles in the direction the line points, or sideways. You may not move more than three of your marbles at once. See Step 4 for examples.

4. Make legal moves like this, where the Os are your marbles (8 is two marbles in a row) and the Xs are blank spaces: XOOOX - - - > XXOOOX8XX - - - > XX8X

5. Push an opponent's pieces by entering a space with a greater number of marbles in a row than you are displacing. For example, if you are moving a straight line of two marbles, they can push one of your opponent's marbles (P):XOOPXX - - - > XXOOPXYou can also push three of your marbles to move one or two of the opponent's marbles.

6. Push an opponent's marble that is already on the edge of the board to push it onto the sideline. The first player to push six of the opponent's marbles into the sideline wins.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember that you need two or three pieces in a row to push an opposing piece.
• Don't push an opposing piece with one of your pieces behind it; that's not allowed!