YINSH

YINSH is a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Belgian game designer Kris Burm and released in 2003 as part of his Project GIPF series of connected abstract games. Players alternate placing rings on a grid of points and then moving a ring in a straight line across any number of occupied or empty spaces, flipping every marker it passes over from one player's color to the other, much like the discs in Reversi. A player scores by forming an unbroken row of five same-colored markers, which lets them remove one of their own rings from the board; because a completed row must be broken and cleared before more rings can be placed on those points, the act of scoring simultaneously weakens the scoring player's presence on the board, creating a distinctive risk in pursuing a win. The first player to remove three of their five rings from the board wins the game, and a typical match takes about thirty minutes.