Alquerque
Menu

- Back
- New
- Rules…
- Options…
- About…

Back

#### Rules

There are different rules available for Alquerque de doze. The default rules as implemented here are as follows. Mind that some parts of the rules might be altered through selected options.

## Game Material

Game board with algebraic notation.

Alquerque is a board game. The rectangular Alquerque board has fixed dimension of 5 times 5 positions horizontally and vertically. Positions on board are connected by a fixed line pattern showing allowed directions of movement for players’ checkers. There are two opposing players: one is controlling the light checkers and the other is controlling the dark checkers.

## Starting Position

Initial board set up. Start of game. Light to play.

The twelve light checkers are placed on all positions of rows 1 and 2, and positions d3 and e3 initially. Thus the row 1 is referred to as being the base row of the player controlling the light checkers. The twelve dark checkers are placed on all positions of rows 4 and 5, and positions a3 and b3 initially. Thus the row 5 is referred to as being the base row of the player controlling the dark checkers.

## Game Mechanics

Alquerque is played alternating players’ turns. The player controlling light checkers moves first. A player might either

- capture opponent’s pieces if possible or
- must perform a normal non-capturing move.

Passing is not allowed.

## Non-capturing Move

Movement of checkers is performed strictly along the lines of the board onto adjacent free positions.

A light checker can not move from it's position to positions on rows with lower numbers. A dark checker can not move from it's position to positions on rows with higher numbers. Thus neither a light nor a dark checker can move backwards in direction of the player's own base row.

A checker that reached the opponent's base row can not be moved any longer but only capture opponent's checkers if possible. Anyway the checker is allowed to perform non-capturing moves again, too, if after the capture it is not positioned on the opponent's base row any longer.

## Capturing Move

Captures are compulsory. If capturing is possible on a player’s turn then the player must perform a capturing move. A capture can be performed in any straight direction indicated by the line pattern of the board (even in direction of own base row).

An opponent's checker on an adjacent position along a line of an own checker is captured by jumping over it in straight line onto an adjacent free position along the line. Jumping to perform captures is done in straight line without any change of direction. Checkers captured leave the board and do not return. By each jump exactly one single opponent's checker is jumped over and thus captured at a time. Checkers can not jump over or capture checkers of own color. Captures can be done and are mandatory if available any time on own turn after the game has started.

In a player's turn multiple consecutive captures performed with the same own checker are allowed and compulsory. The player must continue to capture in the possible multiple consecutive capture until no additional capture is possible. It is not necessary to select the longest possible path to capture the maximum opponent’s pieces. On alternative paths the player may decide freely on which one to continue capturing. After each single straight line jump if performing multiple consecutive captures the direction of jumps may be changed although reverse direction change is not allowed. A captured checker is removed from game play instantly while being jumped. Thus it can not be reused to be jumped again in a multiple capture move.

Checkers can not be stacked by moving or jumping on top of the other.

## Winning Conditions

A player wins by either capturing all opponent's checkers or if the opponent can not perform any legal move. With given rules a tie or draw game is only possible if the option Inverting each pieces' own last move is... allowed is chosen. Per default inverting each pieces' own last move is strictly forbidden.

Have fun and enjoy the game…

Back
Back

#### About Alquerque

Oliver Merkel, Fánóir, Ireland, cc-by-nc-nd 4.0.

### Legal

Copyright (c) 2016
@author Oliver Merkel, Merkel(dot) Oliver(at) web(dot) de.
All rights reserved.
Logos and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

All source code also including code parts written in HMTL, Javascript, CSS is under MIT License.

#### The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Oliver Merkel, Merkel(dot) Oliver(at) web(dot)de

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

If not otherwise stated all graphics (independent of its format) are licensed under
Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#### Alquerque Principles and Concepts

Alquerque implements a two-player deterministic board game.

This Alquerque is a board game using Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with UCB (Upper Confidence Bounds) applied to trees (UCT in short) for the computer player AI. The board game is used for demonstration purposes of the UCT algorithm.

The traditional Alquerque game belongs to the public domain due to its age and unknown author and/or creator.

#### Third Party Code Licenses

This Alquerque implementation uses unmodified independent code libraries provided by third parties. Since their licenses might vary the corresponding information is externally linked below. Thus these external links will enable you to reproduce any copyright notice, any related list of conditions, disclaimers, and especially the copyright holders and authors of the corresponding third party functionality.

jQuery: MIT jQuery Mobile: MIT Raphaël: MIT
Back