Nifty little game.

Tough to figure out the strategy after a few plays of "what the heck am I doing?"

Doesn't help that the computer seems to know what's going on!

Gipf is one of my all-time favourite abstract strategy games and this computer version plays very, very well. Strongly recommended.

Play online against Mona or YL, the strongest Lines of Action programs in the world.

http://games.cs.ualberta.ca/webgames/loa/

Unite is another implementation of Lines of Action for Mac(both OS X and Classic). Unfortunately, I suck at this wonderful game so I cannot really tell you how good the AI is. Or, I can say that it's good enough for me!

http://kevingong.com/Unite/

Qianhong can also be played with a remote player online, and the board and pieces can be customized Also the AI is very strong, I can barely beat it at level 2

One of the most unusual and fun game i have played. If you dont read the rules, the computer game is hard to figure out.

Give it a try.

Unfortunately the AI is easy to beat with some experience.
It seems a very difficult game to program for...

The graphics have been greatly upgraded

Download and play:

This one looks fancy.
http://www.fngo.it/happyend.asp

This also looks promising.
http://www.hbteng.com/Prod06.htm

The best and most user friendly Othello software is the freeware Winzebra.

http://www.radagast.se/othello/download.html

Yes, Hexy is stronger than Queenbee and Six is the strongest of all. Incentive for me to install Linux on my machine...

also playable realtime at http://www.boardspace.net/

What would constitute a decent score on this game?

I think the maximum possible score is around 324 points, but you have to get the right random selection of 19 out of the 27 available tiles. Scores of over 200 are very good, while scores of 100-150 are pretty common.

Now also available at http://www.boardspace.net/

I wish BGG would list this game as "Kaliko" and not the godawful "Psyche-Paths." The online opponent "Chthonic" is very strong. I was ahead in points once, but Chthonic came on strong in the endgame to pass me by.

I wish Kadon would make a buget line of games made of cardboard or plastic rather than the fancy "laser cut" wood. Most of the games they make around $50 and above.

It is hard to consider buying theses games when I can get most of the GIPF series or even Puerto Rico under $25 from online game shops like timewellspent.org.

That old link seems to be broken, but Kaliko is still available here: http://www.tablajatekos.hu/zz2007/kaliko/Kaliko.html.

I'm happy to say that after practicing a little, I beat it about 1/3rd of the time!!!

Wow. I may need to pick this one up some time. It was a lot more fun than I would have guessed. I'd like to see a 4-player game sometime...

I was able to beat the Robot consistently (though very closely) after about 6 or 7 tries. It's been a while since I've tried, though, so I'm not sure that record would be maintained now.

I should add I've never played this against a real person, so I have no idea how that equates to real-life skill!

Wow, very cool game. I can see where this could suffer from AP with live people. I think I have to work on tracking this one down.

Click [Setup] button on bottom right, click "bin" tab, click "Fourcube" to run the program.

Once in the game:

F for faircube rule, a move that limits 1st player advantage.
1-6 to change the AI strength.
H for help menu.

Actually [Setup] is on bootom left.

For good chess freeware and shareware, try searching google.com for any the following: Champion Chess, Chenard, Chess Genius, Chess It, KChess Elite, and Rival Chess.

Most linux distros come with X-Board which you can run as a GUI for various chess engines. Gnuchess being commonly used.

More info here: http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html

A great free Windows program is Arena, and it comes with multiple plug-in engines, some of them very, very strong. Go to http://www.playwitharena.com/

Yes, but shun them both! Unless you like playing blitz at maximum difficulty level (there appears to be no way to change either from the Xboard interface). The Xboard interface also looks like it was designed 20 years ago, which it probably was.

edit: after looking through some xboard alternatives, I recommend eboard, and the Sjeng chess engine. Sjeng will play some chess variants, such as suicide, Fischer random (aka Chess960) and Crazyhouse. Crazyhouse basically chess with the shogi drop rule, and it's more fun than either, IMHO.

WPente v10.4, a Pente program by Mark Mammel for Windows PC.


Download and play on Widows PC
Strong AI.

Get it from the files section of Pente on boardgamegeek or from Mark's site:

http://users.erols.com/msmammel/marksfiv.html

There is also a variant called Poof Pente.

The inventor has som other intresting games:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/cameronb/games/games-1.htm

Druid looks fun.

I can confirm that Druid is fun. It is playable ia email/web at www.gamerz.net.

Does anyone know if you can play Psyche-Paths / Kaliko with this game? It looks the same?

No, Tantrix is different. Four colors are used instead of three for Kaliko. See the BGG Tantrix page for details. I don't know for sure which game came first.

That's why I bought tantrix originally - it looked something like Kaliko and was much more reasonably priced. There was definitely a "butterfly effect" when my mother bought kaliko at a garage sale, culminating (so far) in Boardspace.net

The module for a computer opponent is not free.

You can play FREE with "lobbybot" the online computer player. However you have to start from level one and work your way up.

If you wish to play with Doby, offline AI, you have to pay for it. Doby can be played any level.

The inability to play lobbybot at any level frustrated me to buy Doby.

Play Trax real time with humans or AI on boardspace.net

Java online, multiplatform
OK AI

www.boardapace.net
guest accounts available

An unofficial version.

Download and play.

In the file section of Quarto and from:
http://www.mathemagenic.com/quarto/

Windows.

Hexxagon a free software, an Ataxx variant played on a hexes rather than a squares.

http://www.neave.com