Fanorona
Fanorona is the board game of Madagascar, played on the points where lines cross and not in the spaces between them. You take stones without jumping them: step a stone up to an enemy stone, or straight away from one, and that stone goes, with every enemy stone lined up behind it. A stone that has taken may turn and take again in the same move, and where it stops is yours to choose. Take every enemy stone and you have won.
The board
- Forty-five points, where the lines cross: nine across and five up. Columns are lettered a to i and rows are numbered 1 to 5. White starts on rows 1 and 2, Black on rows 4 and 5, and your own stones are drawn nearest you.
- Every point is joined by a line to the points beside it, across and up and down.
- Twenty-three of the points have diagonal lines through them as well, and the other twenty-two have none. The corners and the centre are among those that have.
- A stone can only go where a line goes. From a point with no diagonal it cannot move diagonally.
Setting up
- Each of you has twenty-two stones. Eighteen of them fill your two home rows.
- The middle row holds four of each, alternating: from a3 they run black, white, black, white, then the empty centre, then black, white, black, white.
- So every point is filled except the centre, e3. White moves first.
A step
- On your turn you move one stone one step: along a line, to the next point, which must be empty.
- A step that takes nothing is called a paika. You may only make one when none of your stones can take anything.
Taking by approach
- Step a stone up to an enemy stone, so that the enemy stone is on the very next point of the line your stone moved along. That stone is taken.
- So is every enemy stone standing behind it on the same line, one after another with no gap. The row stops at the first empty point or the first stone of your own.
- At the start White can play d2-e3: the stone moves up and to the right, and takes f4 and g5 behind it.
Taking by withdrawal
- Step a stone straight away from an enemy stone it was standing beside, along the line that joins them. That stone is taken, and so is every enemy stone in an unbroken row beyond it.
- At the start White can play d3-e3, away from c3 and take it. The stone on a3 is not taken: b3, between them, is White's own, and the row is broken.
One step, two lines
- Sometimes one step would take both ways at once: a row ahead of the stone and another behind it. It takes one of them, never both, and you choose which.
- That same step d3-e3 is one: it moves away from c3 and up to f3. Tap the point and both rows are marked; then tap a stone of the row you want.
You must take
- If any of your stones can take, you must take with one of them.
- Which capture is up to you. You need not take the most stones, and you may take with any stone that can.
Taking again
- After a stone has taken, it may step again and take again, and again after that, all in the same move. It is still your turn until that stone stops.
- Every further step must take something.
- It may not step in the same direction as the step it has just made.
- It may not come back to a point it has already stood on in this move, the point it started from included.
- You may stop after any step that took. On this site each step is played as you make it, and Stop ends the move; a stone with no further capture stops by itself.
How a game ends
- Take every enemy stone and you win.
- A player who has stones but no step to make has lost. This is rare.
- A game also ends if somebody resigns, or if a move deadline passes without a move.
Draws
- If the same position comes round for the third time, with the same player to move, the game is drawn.
- If sixty moves in a row go by with nothing taken, counting both players' moves, the game is drawn. The page shows the count once it is past half way.
- Either of you may offer a draw at any time, and the other may take it or play on. An offer lapses when the player who made it finishes a move.
Reading a move
- A move is written as the points the stone stands on, joined by hyphens. After each step that took there is a letter, A for approach and W for withdrawal: d2-e3A.
- A move of several steps runs on: h3-g3A-h4W is a stone stepping from h3 to g3 and taking by approach, then on to h4 and taking by withdrawal.
Fanorona is widely played in Madagascar and comes in three sizes; this site plays the largest and best known, nine points by five. In 2007 the game was solved by computer: with perfect play by both sides it is a draw (Schadd, Winands, Uiterwijk, van den Herik and Bergsma, "Best Play in Fanorona Leads to Draw", 2008). Three things on this page are choices, made where the traditional rules are silent or give no number: that a player with no move has lost, which follows that paper; that a position repeated three times is a draw; and the limit of sixty moves without a capture, which is not a traditional rule at all.
Fanorona terms
- a point
- a place where lines of the board cross; stones stand on points, and there are forty-five
- a step
- one stone moving along a line to the next point
- a paika
- a step that takes nothing; allowed only when no stone of yours can take
- approach
- taking a row of stones by stepping up to the nearest of them
- withdrawal
- taking a row of stones by stepping straight away from the nearest of them
- a move
- everything you do before your opponent plays: one paika, or one stone taking once or several times