Game 96: Stick Around

 Stick Around has been sticking around on our shelves for decades.  It's from the Great American Trading Company, the board game publisher that put out many of our favorite games that we've been playing since the early days or our marriage.  We hadn't played this for a long time - partly because it's a 2-player game, and we often have our sons at home and are playing with a larger group.  I may have subconsciously avoided it a bit because it's a territory game, and David generally dominates those entirely. Coincidentally, I won the first game tonight decisively.  We went on to play best two out of three.
 Above are our first few moves. I played red.  David played yellow.  The first player cannot place in such a way that the stick touches or crosses the central intersection.  The goal is to be the last player to be able to place a piece.  As we were playing, I started feeling like my brain was thinking about lessons I'd been teaching lately relating to parity.  In the first game I went first and won, and I felt like I blocked him off pretty well.  In the second game he went first and won, and it felt like he was thinking ahead better and also finding ways of slipping through my attempted blocks.  The third game was the most competitive of all and felt very satisfying.  Below are pictures of the final state in each of our three games.



It feels like a classic game.  Chess or Go it is not, of course, but there's a reasonable amount of strategic thinking that is required, and the more you play, the more you start to see - as we found in our three games tonight.  It's definitely fully a game of strategy and not of chance.

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