North Africa · Egyptian

Seega

also called Siga · Sija

Seega is played on a small square grid in two stages: first the players fill the board with their pieces, then they move and capture by trapping an enemy piece between two of their own. Boards of the same pattern have been recorded scratched into stone at Egyptian sites, though dating such marks is notoriously unreliable.

Played in: Egypt · Sudan

— The board

Play against the machine. Your best score is kept in this browser only — nothing is sent to the archive.

Click or tap to play.

— What is playing against you

Scores placements for safety, then searches three moves ahead once pieces start moving.

Searches the game tree 3 moves ahead seega-engine.ts — minimaxS()

Turns on a panel over the board listing the moves the machine considered on its last turn, the score it gave each one, and how many positions it examined to get there. The numbers are the engine's own.

Two different opponents, one per phase. While placing, it scores each empty point: +20 per capture the placement would make, -15 if you could capture it in reply. It also runs a short search here, but during placing there is nothing to move, so that search explores an empty tree and contributes almost nothing. Once the board is full and pieces move, the search becomes real: three plies with alpha-beta. Watch the position count jump between the two phases.

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What this version is not

The placement stage, the blocked centre, orthogonal movement and the sandwich capture are implemented on the five-by-five board. Larger boards (seven-by-seven and nine-by-nine) are not offered, and the local conventions for a blocked player are simplified to passing.

— How it is played

On a five-by-five board each player places twelve pieces two at a time, leaving the centre point empty. Play then alternates, moving one piece one step orthogonally. An enemy piece caught directly between two of yours is captured; a piece moving voluntarily into such a gap is safe.

— Sources

Lane, E. W. (1836). An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. London: Charles Knight.
Murray, H. J. R. (1952). A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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The Archive · Play as Record Seega Africanpedia