The Mind Sports Organisation (MSO) is an association for promoting mind sports including Contract Bridge, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and Scrabble. Since 1997 it has annually organised in England a multi-sport competition, the Mind Sports Olympiad.
Grand Chess is a large-board chess variant invented by Dutch games designer Christian Freeling in 1984. It is played on a 10×10 board, with each side having two additional pawns and two new pieces: the marshal and the cardinal.
Epaminondas is a strategy board game invented by Robert Abbott in 1975. The game is named after the Theban general Epaminondas, known for the use of phalanx strategy in combat. The concept of the phalanx is integral to the game.
Havannah is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Christian Freeling. It belongs to the family of games commonly called connection games; its relatives include Hex and TwixT. Havannah has "a sophisticated and varied strategy" and is best played on a base-10 hexagonal board, 10 hex cells to a side.
Gonnect is a strategy board game for two players invented by João Pedro Neto in 2000. The game is played with standard Go equipment and basically uses the same rules as Go, however the goal of the game is to construct a group that connects any two opposite sides.
Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.
Janggi, sometimes called Korean chess, is a strategy board game popular on the Korean Peninsula. The game was derived from xiangqi, and is very similar to it, including the starting position of some of the pieces, and the 9×10 gameboard, but without the xiangqi "river" dividing the board horizontally in the middle.
Christian Freeling is a Dutch game designer and inventor of abstract strategy games, notably Dameo, Grand Chess, Havannah, and Hexdame.
Bōku is an abstract strategy board game played with marbles on a perforated hexagonal board with 80 spaces. The object of the game is to arrange five marbles in a row. The game has also been sold under the name Bollox, and later Bolix and won a Mensa Select award in 1999.
Surakarta is an Indonesian abstract strategy board game for two players, named after Surakarta, Central Java. The game features an unusual method of capture which is "possibly unique" and "not known to exist in any other recorded board game". Little is known about its history.
Lines of Action is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Claude Soucie. The objective is to connect all of one's pieces into a single group. The game was recommended by the Spiel des Jahres in 1988.
Salta is two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Konrad Heinrich Büttgenbach in 1899 in Germany. Büttgenbach (1870–1939) was born in Heerdt, near Düsseldorf, Germany. The game attained its highest popularity in the early 1900s before World War I especially in France and Germany. The World Trade Fair of 1900 in Paris exhibited a Salta board made of mahogany with golden counters adorned with more than 5,000 diamonds. Famous players were the US chess master Frank Marshall, the German World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker, and the French actress Sarah Bernhardt.
A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more endpoints, completing a closed loop, or connecting all of one's pieces so they are adjacent to each other. Connection games typically have simple rules, but complex strategies. They have minimal components and may be played as board games, computer games, or even paper-and-pencil games.
The Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) is an annual international multi-disciplined competition and festival for games of mental skill and mind sports by Mind Sports Organisation. The inaugural event was held in 1997 in London with £100,000 prize fund and was described as possibly the biggest games festival ever held.
Millennium 3D chess is a three-dimensional chess variant created by William L. d'Agostino in 2001. It employs three vertically stacked 8×8 boards, with each player controlling a standard set of chess pieces. The inventor describes his objective as "extending the traditional chess game into a multilevel environment without distorting the basic game."
Onyx is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Larry Back in 1995. The game features a rule for performing captures, making Onyx unique among connection games.
Hexdame is a strategy board game for two players invented by Christian Freeling in 1979. The game is a literal adaptation of the game international draughts to a hexagonal gameboard.
Dameo is an abstract strategy board game for two players invented by Christian Freeling in 2000. It is a variant of the game draughts and is played on an 8×8 checkered gameboard.
Hostage chess is a chess variant invented by John A. Leslie in 1997. Captured pieces are not eliminated from the game but can reenter active play through drops, similar to shogi. Unlike shogi, the piece a player may drop is one of their own pieces previously captured by the opponent. In exchange, the player returns a previously captured enemy piece which the opponent may drop on a future turn. This is the characteristic feature of the game.
Pacru is an abstract board game invented by Mike Wellman. Pacru has much in common with Chess and Go (game). Pacru can be played by 2,3 or 4 people, each controlling a single colour. Commercial versions will usually come with the rules for two other games that can be played with the same equipment, Azacru and Shacru. Pacru, Azacru and Shacru have all been featured at the Mind Sports Olympiad.
Murray Heasman
Alain Dekker
Paco Garcia de la Banda
Andres Kuusk
David Jameson
