Below are attached the official rules for the game Lines Of Action as adopted for the 5th Computer Olympiad (2000), held in conjunction with the 4th Mind Sports Olympiad.
The time controls for our tournament will be 5 minutes per side per game. The game rules as given are a copy of
http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~olympiad/LOA.htmand are duplicated for archival purposes only. The operational and tournament rules have been modified for our contest.
Game rules
Lines of Action (LOA) is played on a chess board, using 12 black discs and 12 white discs.
Initially the black discs occupy squares b1-g1 and b8-g8, and the white discs occupy a2-a7 and h2-h7.
Black moves first.
Each turn, the player to move moves one of his pieces, in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line, exactly as many squares as there are pieces of either colour anywhere along the line of movement, provided that all intervening squares are either vacant or occupied by same-colour discs, and the destination square is either vacant or occupied by the opposite colour. If the destination square is occupied, the enemy disc is captured, removed from the board, and takes no further part in the game.
The object of the game is arrange that your discs remaining on the board are "connected" (connected means: by moving to a same-colour disc that is adjacent horizontally, vertically or diagonally, it is possible to move from any of your discs to any other).
The game ends when one player (or both) is connected.
If just one player is connected, that player is the winner.
If both players are connected, the player who moved last wins.
Repeated positions with the same player to move are drawn.
ADDED 17 July 2000: If a player has no move, that player loses.
Tournament and Operational Rules
Each program must complete its moves for one game in 5 minutes.
The tournament will be four rounds of random matching (two white, two black), followed by a single-elimination power-protect tournament involving the top 8 particpants. Each elimination encounter will be two games - white and black for each player.
Each game will score 1 points for the winning player, 1/2 point for each player if drawn, and 0 points for the losing player.
Tournament ranking will be by (1) points scored (2) sum of opponents points scored.