To quote wikipedia:
Breakthrough is an abstract strategy board game invented by Dan Troyka in 2000 and made available as a Zillions of Games file (ZRF). At this time it was played on a 7x7 board. It won the 2001 8x8 Game Design Competition, even though the game is trivially extendable to larger board sizes. It has some similarity to checkers, but the strategy is completely different.[1]
The rules are simple:
Each player takes turns moving a piece forward. It can move forward diagonally (left or right), or straight. Pieces can only capture diagonally (think chess pawns, except with the power to move diagonally whenever). If you get a piece to the other side, you win. Draws do not occur because pieces as a rule go closer and closer to the goal (or to their death).
This blog will mostly focus on the 8x8 version (as I believe it is the most feasible to promote, fitting on a chess or checkers board), with certain concepts trivially extended to other sizes.
Why:
There was no other resource on breakthrough strategy I could think of, and a blog was far easier than creating a site. I hope to write up on various aspects of breakthrough strategy and bring light onto this game, which follows Einstein's principle of being as simple as possible, but no simpler.
I am currently working on an AI for Breakthrough in C++.
Who:
Random anonymous person, not affiliated with the game's inventor. Not particularly experienced in the game as of yet, just hoping to publish some rudimentary theory about it to get people started. As far as I know, it is a fairly unexplored game.
Where:
There are various places to play online, usually play by mail. Ludoteka is the only site I know of that allows play in real time (with several variations available). Note that it is a Spanish website, and from my experience it is hard .
There is an implementation for Zillions of Games, which allows rudimentary online.
Interesting game, I had played some games in the past with some success. More interesting, and deserve some antropological or social study, is the fact that so many people play games like chess and this games like breaktrough, santorini, dots & boxes and others have a hard time to be popular. By example, there is not a breaktrough game in Google Play. Im interested too because I developed a game so interesting, at least, as breaktrough, so complex or more than chess, and so easy or more than go. It's name is Fisfus (http://robotkarel.blogspot.mx/2014/05/fisfus.html?view=classic) and I developed a game with incorporated AI (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.robotkarel.fisfus) but I don't know what to do to invite people to start playing it. Some comment?
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