This is a game between two of the top ranked blokus trigon players.
I hope you like it, and also that you can learn somthing to improve your blokus trigon play. …

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Blokus trigon (Rubik87 vs lfm) 18-03-2008

by Asdfghj87 (Category: Entertainment)

Sarah recommends Blokus, an educational game, for the game-lovers on your Christmas list. …

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Christmas Gift Ideas: Blokus

by zaTemple (Category: People & Blogs)

We just tried out the new Cir*kis from Hasbro.  Much like the strategy game Blokus (originally with Educational Insights but now distributed by Mattel), Cir*kis has a grid platform and you play with plastic pieces.  Blokus is much more straightforward and fun to play.  See our full review.  Cir*kis is more complicated–you’re not blocking your opponent but making your own circles and stars and keeping track with pegs.  It’s just not as elegant a game.

blokus college chambery …

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BLOKUS COLLEGE

by pablodu33140 (Category: Sports)

My mummy lost to herself.
This a very sad day in America. …

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Blokus Loser

by strznc (Category: People & Blogs)

Two pros go head to head in an intense game of blokus. …

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Extreme Blokus

by DaddyDuo (Category: Comedy)

blokus …

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blokus morcenx

by jojo7764 (Category: Entertainment)

Blokus …

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Blokus Perier

by pourtoii (Category: Entertainment)

Still thinking a lot about this opening recently — I haven’t posted much on it lately simply because I want to give genuinely useful responses (otherwise this risks simply becoming a how-to manual for people looking to win as violet by lifting games from the blog… it happens). Anyway, my suspicion is that versus good violet play it’s hard to do better than a 3-pt loss. But it’s so complex I won’t pass judgment until a lot of lines are explored.

Anyway, for the moment I’m primarily interested in what is in my view the best reply: orange Y with the knob down. So I’ll just start regularly posting games that I think are close to optimal play. If you have suggestions for where orange or violet went wrong, please post comments, as I want to really map this line out.

OK: so this line is the result of some discussion with oldmanc, who agrees with me that the orange N kissing violet F on move 3 is kinda weak. We have both toyed every so often with L5 in that spot instead. I think these games show this may be promising.

Moves:

1. X – X / 2. F – Y / 3. N – L5 / 4. Y – Z5 / 5. T5 – W / 6. L5 – I5 / 7. I5 – F / 8. Z4 – N / and the rest is packing.

This could be improved (the screenshot is from a live game): orange plays V5 in place of N, P in place of O4, N in place of P. One point more for orange!!! But violet can also improve on it: U and 1 in place of the P, and P in place of O4. So we’re back where we started, just 62-59.

oldmanc thought violet might do better by blocking orange I5. This game suggests the results are more or less the same. It’s a little hard to tell because both sides have to worry about leaks so packing gets tricky.

1. X – X / 2. F – Y / 3. N – L5 / 4. Y – Z5 / 5. T5 – W / 6. L5 – I5 / 7. W – I4 / 8. I5 – P / and the rest is packing (but violet must not play the O4 till orange has used up the I2, otherwise there’s a leak).

When I think of summer I dream of sleeping in, swimming pools, weekends at the lake, outings with friends, sunny days and fewer schedules.  One thing I don’t think of: homework!  So when my friends talked about their kids attending summer school, doing worksheets or required reading, I cringed.  That is not my forte – summer and homework require discipline, which I definitely lack from June – August.  Each time I heard new tales of  “Jenny can’t come out to play until she finishes her worksheets,” my resolve increased – this will be the week we do homework at our house.

While I often fell short, I managed to sneak in a few rays of success this summer – even if they weren’t your traditional fare.  One week, we decided that science for the week would be cooking.  Each child was required to prepare and serve a meal to the rest of us.  While the kids were learning measuring, proportions and the dynamics of serving multiple people, the rest of us were treated to the likes of omelets (courtesy of girls 8 and 10, with moderate assistance from mom) and pasta carbonara (12-year-old son).  We also had fancy desserts, like Hershey bars all dolled up with whipped cream in the center.  The joy my kids had far outweighed the guilt I felt at not doing traditional homework, and they learned practical life skills along the way.

In addition to traditional summer learning, activities like cooking together can help keep your children's minds sharp.

My second child struggles with finding joy in math (just like her mom), so we stealthily disguised it in games like Blokus, Rummikub and card games.  And one day while we were walking around the lake nearby, I decided to quiz her by doing oral multiplication as we walked.  It made the time go faster and the repetition was very helpful to get her ready for the upcoming school year.  We both actually had fun!

My kids are now in week three of school, and we are back to the daily routine of school, activities and getting up early.  Gone are the lazy days of summer, and with it my guilt about not doing more homework along the way, because when I really think about it, we were just thinking outside the box.  Learning isn’t just about worksheets and textbooks, it’s about having fun too – whatever form that might take.

Blokus has one of my favorite qualities in a game: the rules are simple, the decisions less so. I played it yesterday for the first time in years, with my almost-six daughter, her similarly-aged friend, and my three-year-old son.

Well, Max, didn’t make all his own decisions. When his turn came round, he chose one of the pieces in his color, and I chose where on the board to place it. Yesterday was a landmark in his game-playing development in that he seemed to understand and respect the concept of waiting for one’s turn.

So what do you do on your turn? You place one of your pieces on the board so that it touches one of your previously-played pieces at one or more corners. It may not touch another of your pieces along an edge. It may touch another player’s piece. You start the game by placing one of your pieces in an empty corner of the square board.

The game ends for you when you cannot legally place any of your pieces. The game ends altogether when no player can play. The aim is to get all your pieces onto the board. Failing that, you do well to be left with only a few small pieces unplayed.

The photos show a four-player game going from first moves to what I’d consider the end of the opening (or the start of the middle game, as the players meet in the middle of the board) to game end. They show how colorful and attractive the board becomes as the game develops. The visual appeal, along with the simple rules, makes this a good kid/family game.

If, after reading the above, you’re interested in buying Blokus or games like it, you have several broad options. One is to buy it from an online game store. I think I bought my copy from Funagain, where Blokus is currently on sale for $20.

I’m glad to say that Blokus and games like it are more widely played and sold than they were when I was doing a lot of game-buying. New online game stores, such as GameSurplus, have sprung up.

I should apologize for my parochial bias in linking only to USA-based sites. But instead I’ll become yet more parochial in linking to a few stores near Roslindale (and hence near Maddie’s friend Hannah). Eureka! is a good puzzle and game store in Brookline. Near Eureka in Coolidge Corner is the toy store Magic Beans, and nearer to us, in Jamaica Plain, is the toy store Boing! I think I’ve seen Blokus in each of them, although I’m more sure about Beans than about Boing.

Then, to return to online retail, there’s always Amazon. The selection of games there is a lot better than I’d have expected (and found) a few years ago. Amazon even has a video promoting Blokus.

Blokus is an example of a game that’s been successful, and has been part of the wider increase in interest in board games. That wider change is worth a post of its own, and will probably get one soon. But right now, I’ll remain specific to Blokus, and remark that there’s a series of Blokus games.

There’s the smaller version, called Blokus Travel or Blokus Duo depending on the edition. (It’s currently available at Eureka! and at the online retailers mentioned above.) There’s Blokus Trigon, and… but you can go to the official Blokus website and find out more.

In closing, Blokus is excellent as a family game, or as a light filler for groups who usually lean toward heavier games. The basic game strikes me as best with its maximum number of 4 players, but I’ve heard positive reports of it for fewer.

le blokus de luzarches 2008 …

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blokus numéro 1.wmv

by vincelebo (Category: Education)

We are no different than a lot of families in America today when it comes to toys and keeping your kids entertained.  Yes, we caved and bought a “wii” last holiday season, yes our kids have hand held electronic games and yes, they watch their share of Disney television shows.  However, when my wife and I came home yesterday from an overnight trip, what toy was left out on the coffee table?  Blokus, a family board game that we often play as a group. Of course, it had been sitting out since the night before without any signs of anyone putting it away, but that’s another story.

Of all the things that our kids could’ve done with their time, that they chose to play a board game with our sitter was extremely gratifying as a parent.  I give the credit to my wife who is a total game fiend and loves playing all sorts of board games and card games.  The interaction, competition and brain power that is generated from a family night of board games is invaluable.  Not only do you have that time together with the television off, but it’s great for your kids’ thinking, concentration, communication and focused attention.

If you’re like us and your kids are growing up fast and finding more interest in friends than family, break out the games.  You might be surprised how quickly they’ll pull up a chair and sit down for a friendly and competitive game.  Just make sure you add this one rule:  he who loses, puts away the game!

^^ …

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blokus lievin

by chrouxleboss (Category: Education)

blokus …

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Blokus 4

by 001Tonio (Category: Comedy)

BLOKUS COUB …

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BLOKUS COUBERTIN

by saamuell (Category: Comedy)

I live in an old farm house with a front porch. On that porch is a wicker sofa. If all goes well, on Sunday mornings I park myself on this sofa, drink coffee, read the paper, and  mull things over. I decided it might be a good construct for posting to my blog. So, I’m creating a Front Porch section to do that. Below is dispatch one from my front porch. (No doubt your click finger is twitching for the RSS button.)

The subhead on this blog is ‘Now Not New’ and encapsulation of my personal belief that while we need pioneers to go off on quests for ‘paradigm changing innovation’, most of us should be focused on evolution not revolution.

This article in today’s New York Times drives that message home from the perspective of technological migration within industries. It is presented in this article as a business strategy. It struck me as worth thinking about on a lot of levels as we all grapple with change in our businesses, rituals, lifestyles and relationships.

Defining Culture or Keeping Up

One of my formative impressions during my first years working in the ad industry early in my career, was that of agencies taking credit for defining culture when mostly they were just latching on to it. Some examples include Docs which were popular long before some agency convinced the brand to advertise in print. Timberlands which were advertised to WASPS but staples in the Brooklyn hip hop scene. And a few years back one of my favorite nutball sites rathergood.com, got picked up in Quiznos. A certain ad critic went on at length about how the agency created the ultimate mix of creative genius for the brand. Meanwhile, what they did was hire rathergood to take a song they’d already written about the moon and change the lyrics to be about sub sandwiches. Needless to say said critic got a lot of comments to his write-up and quickly buried it.

So, to just put it out there, I read this article on my front porch today, and am betting it will be 90-180 days before some ‘buzz agency’ slaps a brand on this concept and then takes credit for starting a trend that already exists.

I’m not saying advertisers are supposed to define culture, I just get annoyed when they take credit for it like a prophet of cool.

Hive: A Board Game without a board.

Apparently board games remain huge in Europe and especially Germany. In my home we play our share as I think its a great way to gather the family around and talk, laugh and spend time together. On my recent vacation to New Hampshire I picked up the game Hive which I read a review of in Wired magazine (the print edition no less). I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s elegantly simple in concept, quick to learn and reveals layers of complexity the more you play it – like chess. But unlike chess, it doesn’t takes hours to play and young kids (my daughter is eight) can pick it up pretty quickly. Plus, it fits in an easily-carried pouch and I’m guessing works the brain well. Hive has just displaced Blokus as my favorite game of the moment. In a world of great video games, its still nice to see innovative old-school board games too.

The Moose Report

I was recently in New Hampshire on vacation. Whenever I travel I try to spend time observing the people around me. I believe its my full-time 24-7-365 job to study people and how they interact with each other, technology, products, media, etc. Sure, Gartner, Forrester, Yankelovich etc. put out great reports, but nothing beats first-hand observation when you can have it.

Mind you, I was near North Conway and Meredith, not backwoods New Hampshire. This is a Boston vacation community I’m talking about. A few things I noted worth mentioning:

• No one mentioned Twitter. Not once.
• Teens were continually texting but few had ’smart phones’.
• In cafes with Net connections more people were dealing with spreadsheets and Google than Facebook and Flickr.
• Technology was an accessory not a focal point of how people presented themselves.

…All of this struck me as a contrast from my normal travels in the NYC metro area. We need to be cautious that we technophiles don’t begin to believe everyone is like us. Per the first part of this post, it’s one thing to be an opinion leader or early adopter, it’s another to assume everyone is.

One Final Word

One of my favorite Simpson’s lines is from an old episode where Bart is trying to woo a girl. At one point he’s blathering on clumsily as young boys often do in front of girls. This girl, who is a bit snotty, interrupts him dismissively saying, “Bart, do you ever think anything you don’t say?”

This line pops up for me now and then when I think about social media and especially status updates. Do we ever think things we don’t say (or post)? Should we? The sentiment was underscored in this SundayStyles article about no tweet no blog VIP parties.

Two quotes from the article:

“People think that every thought they have, every experience – if its not captured is lost.”

“When its off the record, you actually listen to the conversation, not just wait for your turn to speak.”

Food for thought. And a deliciously apropos point to stop blogging from today.

It was with some excitement that I picked up my brand new game called Blokus® (pictured) from The Games Shop (Royal Arcade, Bourke Street, Melbourne. Even though I shelled out $50 of my hard earned cash I was confident that my money would be well spent.

This wonderful game has its own website where you can learn the rules and play online! The game requires a combination of 2D spatial awareness and logic. There is even a 3D version!

I have noticed that some students (and teachers) have a definite weakness with spatial skills. For example, in a year 11 class today I produced a tangram puzzle at the end of the lesson and quickly noticed that the first two students to try the puzzle had difficulty “seeing” all the different ways a particular piece could be placed (flips and turns). I can only conclude that this a part of the mathematics curriculum that is often neglected and needs much more attention. The various forms of the Blokus® game would help with this.

The classic game for 2 to 4 players has a 20 x 20 square board. Each player has 21 pieces which he/she takes turns to place on the board joined only at the corners.

The 21 pieces consist of: 1 monomino, 1 domino, 2 triominoes, 5 tetrominoes; and 12 pentominoes. The pentominoes are shown below:

Pentominoes and hexominoes are rich in mathematics – but I’ll leave that for a future post.

Blokus® gameplay can be very social or very serious. Although very simple to learn, the inherent complexities of skillful play will keep players interested long term. It is perhaps not surprising that this game was invented by a mathematician – I highly recommend it to you!

I know I’ve posted about the growing popularity of  board games and game nights before, especially because of their affordability, but I figure when I see a large website such as cnnmoney.com talking about board games, a reminder is not a bad thing     It’s also good to see this getting out to a wider audience, sure, we know about the board game fun, but articles like this one at cnnmoney.com help to spread this to a larger audience.

Kim Thai starts the article talking about Mattel aquiring Blokus earlier this year and the growing draw of the gaming hobby with families and a new generation of twenty somethings.  The article talks of the newer generation of games like Blokus pulling people in with their quick strategy.  This is different than longer traditional games many of us remember like Monopoly.

“I don’t think board games are going away,” Byrne says. “In a screen-driven world, we really need human interaction — that’s something that board games have that hasn’t been replicated.”

This was a nice read.  A special thanks to one of my Facebook friends, Micheal Erb, for pointing out this article.  Michael reviews games at his livejournal page, which is a companion to his newspaper reviews.

read the article here

With the standard version of this opening (with orange having an X, N, Y cross in the middle of the board) the tendency is for orange to be protective of the holes in his defence. This game shows that this idea may be a mistake.

Moves:
1. X – X
2. F – N
3. N – Y
4. Y – Z5
5. L5 – W
6. T4 – L4

This is the key moment in the game: violet could (& probably should) attack on the right side rather than play the T4 in the bottom left corner.

7. L4 – Z4 and the rest is packing (since orange cannot waste the 1 attacking violet’s main area, since it’s better to grab I3 in the bottom left).

Here’s a line I’ve played a lot as violet. It doesn’t have a happy end for orange.

Moves:
1. X – X
2. F – Y
3. W – N

These last two moves are often reversed. In my view it is essential that violet play W here, even though this means that it is unavailable for the block for the leak off the orange N. Other moves here are too far away from the centre and permit orange to rob violet of too much of the corner.

4. N – F
5. Z5 – L5
6. P – W

Orange could try to take advantage of the leak off orange N here before violet has a chance to seal it off. In my experience this is a bad idea, but I suppose it could be worth a try, & I haven’t analysed it yet. — Unfortunately orange lacks any good piece for the block, i.e. one that both seals off the bottom side & maintains an attack on the bottom left corner. Te W isn’t much use.

7. V5 – Z4

Again, orange could have tried I2 off the N rather than defending, but it’s REALLY late in the day to try this now…

8. T4 – I2
9. Y – 1
10. Z4 – V3 and the rest is packing. Possibly there’s a better packing for either side–this is a screenshot from a real game, so not necessarily ideal play.

This is one a lot of people have been asking me about. It’s a very befuddling opening for beginners, since they tend to get panicked when it looks like violet’s defences are impregnable. Even if you don’t want to learn all the possible lines, just keep these key rules in mind as orange: (1) never move into the centre on move 2; (2) try to keep nibbling at the edges of the board, keeping some corners active there. Even if you don’t win you can minimize loss by following these rules.

People on the Blokus site tend to call this opening the Lerpy, after a player (full name “lerpyfirth”) who used to use this one over & over & over until you were sick of it (he has stopped doing this, though there are other players who have taken up the baton). I don’t know whether he originally thought this one up, or someone else. — It’s a very effective opening against beginners, & can give oldtimers problems too. Its main problem is that if orange really knows the defences against it well, then it rarely wins big. But it has a LOT of different lines & it’s hard to keep them all in your head.

Anyway, here’s one winning line for orange, just to show you it can be done.

Orange 61 - Violet 60

Moves:

1. X – X
2. F – N

This is one of the standard responses. The Y up against the violet X is another standard response for move 2. If violet doesn’t move into the gap in the middle on move 3, then move 3 for orange tends to be whatever of the Y or N moves wasn’t made on move 2. That’s how this game proceeds…

3. N – Y

Orange has the option of turning the Y’s knob up for down here. I’ll discuss that line on another occasion.

4. Y – W

At this point, violet has two options: to wrap W around orange’s Y, or to play something else that’s less powerful. The reason why violet is reluctant to play the W is because it’s the only piece that can handle the 2-1 leak off the orange N.

5. L5 – L5
6. V5 – Z4
7. L4 – I2

The L4 is crucial here for violet, because violet needs to be able to seal the leak off orange Y. Otherwise orange plays the 1 off orange Y on this turn, & forces violet to ruin his packing by playing a less space-efficient piece like T4.

8. W – 1
9. I4…. and the rest is packing.

I’ve been trying to be thorough with this opening, as I wish to leave no avenue unexplored. So I’m starting with what I consider to be the weakest lines first, where orange plays X up and then plays below rather than wrapping above. (In general I think that all the wrap-below options are bad for orange.) Here is what happens if the orange line I discussed in the previous post in this series — X-Y-N — is not immediately blocked by violet.

Violet 61 - Orange 56. This is cautious play for violet yet it's a 5-point win.

Moves:

1. F – X
2. X – Y
3. N – N
4. Z5 – W

Two notes here. 1) I picked orange Z5 because it’s the most difficult move for violet to block (because in the following move, as we’ll see, violet decides to block, so I wanted to make life difficult for him) and because I think orange F is more useful for defense on the bottom. If someone can show me a better move here or in the following steps I’d be interested to know.

2) Violet W is key: violet Z5 looks as good or better, but it’s actually a terrible mistake. As we’ll see, we need the Z5 for the block on top, & violet W on the bottom also keeps vulnerable corners away from orange.

5. Z5 – L5

I wanted to see what happens if violet plays defensively from this point onwards. Surprisingly, the answer is that — even though it looks like the board is split nearly evenly — violet has a quite decent win in his pocket. The key from this point is for violet to hang on to the Y, as the Z5-Y combo is what seals the top (with L4, T4, or V3 equally good for capping it off)

6. L4 – F
7. T5 – I2
8. Y – I1
9. V3 – W and the rest is packing.

Final score 61-56 for violet — pretty good showing. I may have missed a slightly better packing.

Unless someone can show me a variant line I will assume that the X-Y below line for orange is a washout, & move on to other lines.

In my previous post I’d started to explore what happens if orange plays X-up then circles beneath rather than above. My general feeling is that this is bad for orange but it cannot be instantly ruled out. Orange L5 on move 3 is a bad response, as we saw, since violet can block it with impunity & win handsomely. Orange N, on the other hand, cannot be blocked without violet getting into serious trouble. With ideal packing on both sides, I believe violet still wins by 1 point: here’s my packing:

Violet 61, Orange 60

Moves:

1. F – X
2. X – Y
3. N – N
4. W – Z5
5. P – 1
6. L5 – Z4
7. 1 – V3
8. I2 – L4 and the rest is packing

Obviously on move 4 violet must ignore orange N & instead wrap around the right with W or Z5. I think those lines do not obviously favour either side, but need to investigate further.

The other question here is whether violet N on move 3 is good. I can’t see any other obvious move, but I may be wrong.