The Story
Where it came from, and why it turned out this way.
DesignKris Burm · 2003 · fifth game of the GIPF Project
One designer's hexalogy
Starting in 1997, the Belgian designer Kris Burm spent a decade building a set of six interrelated abstract games known collectively as the GIPF Project. YINSH is the fifth, published in 2003. The whole series shares an aesthetic: very few components, no randomness, no text, and rules carried entirely by geometry. That is a rare kind of long-term undertaking in modern board game history — few designers commit ten years to a series of abstracts.
You score by weakening yourself
YINSH is best known for its negative feedback loop: every time you complete a row of five markers, you return those five to the shared pool and must surrender one of your own rings. The first player to give up three rings wins. In other words, the closer you get to victory the fewer rings you have on the board and the less mobility you retain. It is a deeply counter-intuitive design in which leading automatically carries a penalty, and the final point is usually the hardest one.
Markers do not travel with the ring
Another mechanism people misread: when a ring moves it leaves a marker of your color on the square it started from, and every marker it crosses flips — including your own. So each move does two things at once: it adds one of your markers at the origin, and it swaps ownership of an entire run along the path. Beginners often imagine the marker travelling with the ring, and every subsequent calculation goes wrong from there.
Why it needs a rule about resolution order
A single move can form several rows at once, and can even complete rows for both players. YINSH therefore specifies the order explicitly: the mover resolves all of their own rows one at a time, surrendering a ring for each, and if that removes their third ring the game ends immediately and the opponent's rows are never processed. Clauses where sequence itself decides the result are uncommon in abstracts, and this is where YINSH endgames are most often miscalculated.
- The six GIPF games are GIPF, TAMSK, ZÈRTZ, DVONN, YINSH, and PÜNCT; this site carries DVONN, YINSH, and TZAAR.
- YINSH has won multiple abstract-game awards and appears consistently near the top of best-two-player-abstract lists.
- A run of six or more grants choice rather than extra reward: you may still remove only five consecutive markers, and the owner picks which stretch.
Complete Rules
Start with what a turn allows and how the game is won.
- Board
- 85 six-way intersections
- Components
- 5 rings each, 51 shared markers
- Winning conditionthe first player to remove three of their own rings from the board wins. The path there is counter-intuitive — whenever you assemble five consecutive markers of your color along a line, you return those five markers to the shared pool and must surrender one of your own rings. Three of those and you have won, even though by then you have very little mobility left.
- The board starts empty. Players alternate placing one of their rings on any empty intersection, including the outermost ones, for ten placements in total. The tenth is made by Dark, so the first movement turn belongs to Light.
- In the movement phase, a turn is not simply "move a ring" but a fixed five-step sequence: choose one of your rings → take a marker from the pool and place it on that ring's original intersection with your color face up → slide the ring in a straight line to an empty intersection → flip every marker crossed on the way → resolve every row this creates. All five happen as one turn before your opponent plays.
- A ring slides along one of six directions only and can never turn. Before reaching any marker it may cross any number of consecutive empty points and stop on any of them; but once it enters a run of consecutive markers, it must cross the entire run and may only stop on the first empty point beyond it, with no further sliding.
- A ring may never cross another ring, and may never land on a ring or a marker. If a run of markers is immediately followed by another ring or by the board edge, that direction has no legal destination.
- Once the ring lands, every marker it crossed flips regardless of ownership — your opponent's markers become yours, and your own markers become theirs. The marker you just placed on the ring's original point was not crossed and does not flip, and a move that crosses no markers causes no flips at all.
- Five consecutive markers of one color along a line form a resolvable row; rings are not counted in a row. To resolve it, first return exactly five consecutive markers to the shared pool, then remove one of that color's own rings from the board — your own ring, not your opponent's.
- A run of six or more grants choice rather than extra reward: you may still remove only five consecutive markers, the owner chooses which stretch, and the surplus markers stay on the board. After every removal the board must be rescanned; you may not delete all the lines you originally spotted in one sweep.
- When one move forms several rows at once, each must be resolved individually and each resolution costs one ring. When two rows intersect, the five markers you remove first may break up the other row, which then simply ceases to exist — and the owner decides which to handle first.
- If one move creates rows for both players, the mover resolves all of their own rows first. If that removes their third ring the game ends immediately and the opponent's rows are never processed. Otherwise the opponent resolves their rows next, and only then begins their normal turn.
- The first player to accumulate three removed rings of their own wins immediately.
Your First Game
Use this order of thought to get through a complete game quickly.
- Memorize the turn order first: place a marker on the origin point → move the ring → flip the markers crossed → resolve any rows. The most common misunderstanding is thinking the marker travels with the ring — markers always stay where they are and only ever flip.
- Destinations come in two cases: before touching any markers, every empty point along the line is available; once you cross a run of markers, only the first empty point beyond it remains. Select a ring and the interface lights up every legal destination, so following the highlights never goes wrong.
- Forming a row does not take anything from your opponent — it costs you a ring: five markers return to the pool, and you have one fewer ring. Every time you "score," your mobility on the board drops.
- During placement, do not crowd all five rings into one corner. Spreading them out covers lines in more directions and makes it much easier to find long sliding destinations in the middlegame.
- Do not rush to build rows in the first dozen moves. Use your ring moves to lay markers across the center of the board, where the lines in all six directions are longest and one marker can participate in the most potential fives.
- Long runs and intersecting lines often offer several legal five-marker stretches, and the interface highlights each so you can choose. Do not assume the system picks the best stretch for you.
Practical Strategy
Move from knowing the rules to playing with a plan.
- Every ring move changes two things at once: a new marker of your color appears at the origin, and an entire run of markers along the path swaps color. Evaluate both when choosing a destination rather than fixating on the landing point.
- A single flip that simultaneously breaks your opponent's four in a row and completes a line of your own is worth vastly more than simply adding another marker.
- Fewer rings means closer to victory but weaker board control. The third ring is usually claimed with a row you prepared in advance, not with one built from scratch late in the game.
- Laying markers into runs of six or into several intersecting long lines keeps multiple resolution options open, so your opponent cannot dismantle every threat with a single flip.
- Watch the level of the shared pool. The closer it comes to empty, the more likely the game ends by counting removed rings — so the leader tends to accelerate row formation, since resolving returns five markers to the pool, while the trailing player tries to avoid an early freeze.
- Your own markers can be flipped away by your opponent too, which makes a dense band of same-color markers surprisingly fragile. Markers spread over several different lines are much harder to flip in one stroke.
Winning and Special Rules
Details that are easy to miss but can change the result.
- The first player to remove their third ring wins immediately. If a single move would give both players their third ring, the mover resolves first and therefore wins.
- If a move consumes the last marker in the pool, the flips and all row resolutions still complete normally, and the five markers removed return to the pool. Only if the pool is still at zero after all resolutions does the game settle by removed ring count: more rings removed wins, equal counts draw.
- In the extremely rare case where the side to move cannot move any of their five rings, the only legal action is a pass; once a legal ring move becomes available again, passing is no longer allowed.
- This site uses ruleset yinsh-standard-v1: no Blitz variant where a single row wins, no threefold-repetition draw, and no custom preset layouts.
- Neither rings nor markers carry any text: the hollow ring outline, the two marker faces, and the flip animation carry all the board semantics.
Common Mistakes
The traps new players fall into most often.
- Trying to keep sliding across empty points after crossing a run of markers, or flipping only some of the markers crossed.
- Moving a ring across another ring, or landing a ring on top of a marker.
- Forgetting that a marker of your color must be left on the ring's original point, and treating a ring move as a pure displacement.
- Trying to take your opponent's ring when you form a row. The only ring you may remove is your own.
- Assuming a run of six lets you remove six markers, or that several rows formed by one move can all be deleted simultaneously.