Gess is a cross between Go and Chess. It is played on a Go board, with Go stones, but the stones occupy the centres of the squares rather than the intersections of the lines on the board. Any three by three block of stones which contains only stones of your colour or empty spaces is your piece. Pieces move in a way defined by the cells in it that are occupied by stones.

I won't give all the details or all the rules here. If you want more information, consult the following WWW pages:

• Gess at the Chess Variant Pages.
• The original article which introduced the game.

Below is my Gess applet. The button launches a separate window containing the board. It should be pretty obvious how to play. It's just a matter of dragging your piece to its new location. Unfortunately, I only implemented it so that two people can play on the same board. An obvious improvement would be to make a multiplayer, networked version of the applet.

I'm sure you'll also find problems with playability and ease-of-use. This code was written in 1994 and is long retired; I have no intention of revisiting it in the near future. The UI isn't bad, and it certainly beats pushing little groups of stones around on a Go board.

Hope you enjoy this applet!

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Last modified: Sunday, 20-Jan-2002 20:17:03 EST