text:
Comparative psychology

Comparative psychology is the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. The phrase comparative psychology may be employed in a narrow and a broad meaning. In its narrow meaning, it refers to the study of the similarities and differences in the psychology and behavior of different species. In a broader meaning, comparative psychology includes comparisons between different biological and socio-cultural groups, such as species, sexes, developmental stages, ages, and ethnicities. Research in this area addresses many different issues, uses many different methods and explores the behavior of many different species from insects to primates.

Comparative psychology is sometimes assumed to emphasize cross-species comparisons, including those between humans and animals. However, some researchers feel that direct comparisons should not be the sole focus of comparative psychology and that intense focus on a single organism to understand its behavior is just as desirable; if not more so. Donald Dewsbury reviewed the works of several psychologists and their definitions and concluded that the object of comparative psychology is to establish principles of generality focusing on both proximate and ultimate causation.

Using a comparative approach to behavior allows one to evaluate the target behavior from four different, complementary perspectives, developed by Niko Tinbergen. First, one may ask how pervasive the behavior is across species (i.e. how common is the behavior between animal species?). Second, one may ask how the behavior contributes to the lifetime reproductive success of the individuals demonstrating the behavior (i.e. does the behavior result in animals producing more offspring than animals not displaying the behavior)? Theories addressing the ultimate causes of behavior are based on the answers to these two questions.

Third, what mechanisms are involved in the behavior (i.e. what physiological, behavioral, and environmental components are necessary and sufficient for the generation of the behavior)? Fourth, a researcher may ask about the development of the behavior within an individual (i.e. what maturational, learning, social experiences must an individual undergo in order to demonstrate a behavior)? Theories addressing the proximate causes of behavior are based on answers to these two questions. For more details see Tinbergen's four questions.

History
The 9th century scholar al-Jahiz wrote works on the social organization and communication methods of animals like ants. The 11th century Arabic writer Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote the Treatise on the Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals, an early treatise dealing with the effects of music on animals. In the treatise, he demonstrates how a camel's pace could be hastened or slowed with the use of music, and shows other examples of how music can affect animal behavior, experimenting with horses, birds and reptiles. Through to the 19th century, a majority of scholars in the Western world continued to believe that music was a distinctly human phenomenon, but experiments since then have vindicated Ibn al-Haytham's view that music does indeed have an effect on animals.

Charles Darwin was central in the development of comparative psychology; it is thought that psychology should be spoken in terms of "pre-" and "post-Darwin" because his contributions were so influential. Darwin's theory led to several hypotheses, one being that the factors that set humans apart, such as higher mental, moral and spiritual faculties, could be accounted for by evolutionary principles. In response to the vehement opposition to Darwinism was the "anecdotal movement" led by George Romanes who set out to demonstrate that animals possessed a "rudimentary human mind". Romanes is most famous for two major flaws in his work: his focus on anecdotal observations and entrenched anthropomorphism.

Near the end of the 19th century, several scientists existed whose work was also very influential. Douglas Alexander Spalding was called the "first experimental biologist", and worked mostly with birds; studying instinct, imprinting, and visual and auditory development. Jacques Loeb emphasized the importance of objectively studying behavior, Sir John Lubbock is credited with first using mazes and puzzle devices to study learning and Conwy Lloyd Morgan is thought to be "the first ethologist in the sense in which we presently use the word".

Although the field initially attempted to include a variety of species, by the early 1950s it had focused primarily on the white lab rat and the pigeon, and the topic of study was restricted to learning, usually in mazes. This stunted state of affairs was pointed out by Beach (1950) and although it was generally agreed with, no real change took place. He repeated the charges a decade later, again with no results. In the meantime, in Europe, ethology was making strides in studying a multitude of species and a plethora of behaviors. There was friction between the two disciplines where there should have been cooperation, but comparative psychologists refused, for the most part, to broaden their horizons. This state of affairs ended with the triumph of ethology over comparative psychology, culminating in the Nobel Prize being given to ethologists, combined with a flood of informative books and television programs on ethological studies that came to be widely seen and read in the United States. At present, comparative psychology in the United States is moribund.

Throughout the long history of comparative psychology, repeated attempts have been made to enforce a more disciplined approach, in which similar studies are carried out on animals of different species, and the results interpreted in terms of their different phylogenetic or ecological backgrounds. Behavioral ecology in the 1970s gave a more solid base of knowledge against which a true comparative psychology could develop. However, the broader use of the term "comparative psychology" is enshrined in the names of learned societies and academic journals, not to mention in the minds of psychologists of other specialisms, so the label of the field is never likely to disappear completely.

A persistent question with which comparative psychologists have been faced is the relative intelligence of different species of animal. Indeed, some early attempts at a genuinely comparative psychology involved evaluating how well animals of different species could learn different tasks. These attempts floundered; in retrospect it can be seen that they were not sufficiently sophisticated, either in their analysis of the demands of different tasks, or in their choice of species to compare. However, the definition of "intelligence" in comparative psychology is deeply affected by anthropomorphism; experiments focused on simple tasks, complex problems, reversal learning, learning sets, and delayed alternation were plagued with practical and theoretical problems. In the literature, "intelligence" is defined as whatever is closest to human performance and neglects behaviors that humans are usually incapable of (e.g. echolocation). Specifically, comparative researchers encounter problems associated with individual differences, differences in motivation, differences in reinforcement, differences in sensory function, differences in motor capacities, and species-typical preparedness (i.e. some species have evolved to acquire some behaviors quicker than other behaviors).

Species studied
A wide variety of species have been studied by comparative psychologists. However, a small number have dominated the scene. Ivan Pavlov's early work used dogs; although they have been the subject of occasional studies, since then they have not figured prominently. Increasing interest in the study of abnormal animal behavior has led to a return to the study of most kinds of domestic animal. Thorndike began his studies with cats, but American comparative psychologists quickly shifted to the more economical rat, which remained the almost invariable subject for the first half of the 20th century and continues to be used.

Skinner introduced the use of pigeons, and they continue to be important in some fields. There has always been interest in studying various species of primate; important contributions to social and developmental psychology were made by Harry F. Harlow's studies of maternal deprivation in rhesus monkeys. Cross-fostering studies have shown similarities between human infants and infant chimpanzees. Kellogg and Kellogg (1933) aimed to look at heredity and environmental effects of young primates. They found that a cross-fostered chimpanzee named Gua was better at recognizing human smells and clothing and that the Kelloggs' infant (Donald) recognised humans better by their faces. The study ended nine months after it had begun, after the infant began to imitate the noises of Gua.

Nonhuman primates have also been used to show the development of language in comparison with human development. For example, Gardner (1967) successfully taught the female chimpanzee Washoe 350 words in American Sign Language. Washoe subsequently passed on some of this teaching to her adopted offspring, Loulis. A criticism of Washoe's acquisition of sign language focused on the extent to which she actually understood what she was signing. Her signs may have just been based on an association to get a reward, such as food or a toy. Other studies concluded that apes do not understand linguistic input, but may form an intended meaning of what is being communicated. All great apes have been reported to have the capacity of allospecific symbolic production.

Interest in primate studies has increased with the rise in studies of animal cognition. Other animals thought to be intelligent have also been increasingly studied. Examples include various species of corvid, parrots—especially the grey parrot—and dolphins. Alex (Avian Learning EXperiment) is a well known case study (1976–2007) which was developed by Pepperberg, who found that the African gray parrot Alex did not only mimic vocalisations but understood the concepts of same and different between objects. The study of non-human mammals has also included the study of dogs. Due to their domestic nature and personalities, dogs have lived closely with humans, and parallels in communication and cognitive behaviours have therefore been recognised and further researched. Joly-Mascheroni and colleagues (2008) demonstrated that dogs may be able to catch human yawns and suggested a level of empathy in dogs, a point that is strongly debated. Pilley and Reid found that a Border Collie named Chaser was able to successfully identify and retrieve 1022 distinct objects/toys.

Animal cognition
Researchers who study animal cognition are interested in understanding the mental processes that control complex behavior, and much of their work parallels that of cognitive psychologists working with humans. For example, there is extensive research with animals on attention, categorization, concept formation, memory, spatial cognition, and time estimation. Much research in these and other areas is related directly or indirectly to behaviors important to survival in natural settings, such as navigation, tool use, and numerical competence. Thus, comparative psychology and animal cognition are heavily overlapping research categories.

Disorders of animal behavior
Veterinary surgeons recognize that the psychological state of a captive or domesticated animal must be taken into account if its behavior and health are to be understood and optimized.

Common causes of disordered behavior in captive or pet animals are lack of stimulation, inappropriate stimulation, or overstimulation. These conditions can lead to disorders, unpredictable and unwanted behavior, and sometimes even physical symptoms and diseases. For example, rats who are exposed to loud music for a long period will ultimately develop unwanted behaviors that have been compared with human psychosis, like biting their owners.

The way dogs behave when understimulated is widely believed to depend on the breed as well as on the individual animal's character. For example, huskies have been known to ruin gardens and houses if they are not allowed enough activity. Dogs are also prone to psychological damage if they are subjected to violence. If they are treated very badly, they may become dangerous.

The systematic study of disordered animal behavior draws on research in comparative psychology, including the early work on conditioning and instrumental learning, but also on ethological studies of natural behavior. However, at least in the case of familiar domestic animals, it also draws on the accumulated experience of those who have worked closely with the animals.

Human-animal relationships
The relationship between humans and animals has long been of interest to anthropologists as one pathway to an understanding the evolution of human behavior. Similarities between the behavior of humans and animals have sometimes been used in an attempt to understand the evolutionary significance of particular behaviors. Differences in the treatment of animals have been said to reflect a society's understanding of human nature and the place of humans and animals in the scheme of things. Domestication has been of particular interest. For example, it has been argued that, as animals became domesticated, humans treated them as property and began to see them as inferior or fundamentally different from humans. Ingold remarks that in all societies children have to learn to differentiate and separate themselves from others. In this process, strangers may be seen as "not people", and like animals. Ingold quoted Sigmund Freud: "Children show no trace of arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw a hard-and-fast line between their own nature and that of all other animals. Children have no scruples over allowing animals to rank as their full equals." With maturity however, humans find it hard to accept that they themselves are animals, so they categorize, separating humans from animals, and animals into wild animals and tame animals, and tame animals into house pets and livestock. Such divisions can be seen as similar to categories of humans: who is part of a human community and someone who is not—that is, the outsider.

The New York Times ran an article that showed the psychological benefits of animals, more specifically of children with their pets. It has been proven that having a pet does in fact improve kids' social skills. In the article, Dr. Sue Doescher, a psychologist involved in the study, stated, "It made the children more cooperative and sharing." It was also shown that these kids were more confident with themselves and able to be more empathic with other children.

Furthermore, in an edition of Social Science and Medicine it was stated, "A random survey of 339 residents from Perth, Western Australia were selected from three suburbs and interviewed by telephone. Pet ownership was found to be positively associated with some forms of social contact and interaction, and with perceptions of neighborhood friendliness. After adjustment for demographic variables, pet owners scored higher on social capital and civic engagement scales." Results like these let us know that owning a pet provides opportunities for neighborly interaction, among many other chances for socialization among people.

Topics of study

 * Individual behavior
 * General descriptions
 * Orientation (interaction with environment)
 * Locomotion
 * Ingestive behavior
 * Hoarding
 * Nest building
 * Exploration
 * Play
 * Tonic immobility (playing dead)
 * Other miscellaneous behaviors (personal grooming, hibernation, etc.)
 * Reproductive behavior
 * General descriptions
 * Developmental psychology
 * Control (nervous system and endocrine system)
 * Imprinting
 * Evolution of sexual characteristics/behaviors
 * Social behavior
 * Imitation
 * Behavior genetics
 * Instincts
 * Sensory-perceptual processes
 * Neural and endocrine correlates of behavior
 * Motivation
 * Evolution
 * Learning
 * Qualitative and functional comparisons
 * Consciousness and mind

Notable comparative psychologists
Noted comparative psychologists, in this broad sense, include:

 * Aristotle
 * Frank Beach
 * F.J.J. Buytendijk
 * Charles Darwin
 * James Mark Baldwin
 * Allen and Beatrix Gardner
 * Harry F. Harlow
 * Donald Hebb
 * Richard Herrnstein
 * L.T. Hobhouse
 * Clark L. Hull
 * Linus Kline
 * Wolfgang Köhler
 * Konrad Lorenz
 * Emil Wolfgang Menzel Jr.
 * Neal E. Miller
 * C. Lloyd Morgan
 * O. Hobart Mowrer
 * Robert Lockhard
 * Ivan Pavlov
 * Irene Pepperberg
 * George Romanes
 * Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe
 * Sara Shettleworth
 * B.F. Skinner
 * Willard Small
 * Edward C. Tolman
 * Edward L. Thorndike
 * Margaret Floy Washburn
 * John B. Watson
 * Wilhelm Wundt

Many of these were active in fields other than animal psychology; this is characteristic of comparative psychologists.

Related fields
Fields of psychology and other disciplines that draw upon, or overlap with, comparative psychology include:
 * Animal cognition
 * Behavioral ecology
 * Operant conditioning
 * Ethology
 * Evolutionary neuroscience
 * Experimental analysis of behavior
 * Neuroethology
 * Physiological psychology
 * Psychopharmacology
 * Trans-species psychology

title: Comparative psychology


text:
New Georgia Islands

The New Georgia Islands are part of the Western Province of Solomon Islands. They are located to the northwest of Guadalcanal. The larger islands are mountainous and covered in rain forest. The main islands are New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Kolombangara (a dormant volcano), Ghizo, Vangunu, Rendova and Tetepare. They are surrounded by coral reefs and include the Marovo Lagoon.

Another famous location is Kennedy Island where the future United States president, John F. Kennedy, spent three days stranded during World War II. Several of the islands were scenes of fighting in the war.

The main towns are Gizo, Munda and Noro. The main industries are forestry and fishing.

One of the smaller New Georgia islands, Ranongga, was lifted three metres (10 ft.) out of the Pacific Ocean by the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake, causing an expansion of its shoreline by up to 70 metres all around.

Northwest Solomonic languages are spoken on the island, as well as the non-Austronesian language Touo in the southern part of Rendova Island.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: New Georgia Islands


text:
Lewis White Beck

Lewis White Beck (September 26, 1913 – June 7, 1997) was an American philosopher and scholar of German philosophy. Beck was Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Rochester and served as the Philosophy Department chair there from 1949 to 1966. He translated several of Immanuel Kant's works, such as the Critique of Practical Reason, and was the author of Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965).

Biography
Born in Griffin, Georgia, Beck was the youngest of four children in a family raised by Erasmus W. Beck and Ann H. Beck. His siblings included: Evelyn H. Beck, Edwin H. Beck and Sarah A Beck. His father was employed as both an engineer and a sales representative.

Beck received his bachelor's degree Phi Beta Kappa from Emory University in 1934, his master's degree from Duke University in 1935, and his doctoral degree from Duke University in 1937. His dissertation was entitled: "Synopsis: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge.

Academic career
Before moving to Rochester, Beck was an international student and a Rosenwald Fund Fellow at the University of Berlin (1937–38; an interview about his experiences there appeared in The Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 18, 1938), an instructor at Emory University (1938–41), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware (1941–48), and associate professor at Lehigh University (1946–48), eventually becoming professor (1948–49).

Beck joined the faculty at the University or Rochester in 1949 and served as Chairman of its Department of Philosophy from 1949-1966. He also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School (1952-1956) as well as the Dean of the Graduate School (1956-1957) where he helped to raise international recognition for the PhD. program in Philosophy. During this time he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Philosophy (1957).

In !962 he was appointed as the Burbank Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and subsequently Professor Emeritus in 1979. In 1962 he became the first recipient of the University's Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He was subsequently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and the American Council of Learned Societies in 1964. From 1970-1975, Beck also served on the National Endowment for the Humanities Council. During this time he also served as a member of the board of directors for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1970-1978).

During the course of his long academic career, Beck also held appointments as a visiting lecturer at several leading academic research centers including: Columbia University (1950), George Washington University, the University of Minnesota (1953), the University of California at Berkeley (1973), Yale University (1974) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (1982-1983). In addition, he received honorary degrees from Hamilton College, Emory University and the University of Tubingen.

in addition to his teaching activities, Beck also served on the editorial board of several leading philosophical research journals including: the Journal of the History of Ideas and Kantian-Studien. Over the years he also served on the editorial board of the journal The Monist which also featured his work. In addition, in 1970 he served as editor of the Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress. In 1985 he also contributed to the formation of the North American Kantian Society.

Academic works
Beck is most noted for his research into the collective writings of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Included among his publications is a translation of Kant's extensive "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1949. He also achieved widespread national and international recognition within academic circles for his scholarship, commentary and encyclopedic knowledge of Kant's philosophical works.

In he course of his exhaustive commentaries, Beck shared several noteworthy insights into Kant's philosophical thoughts. While revisiting Kant's distinction between "analytic" and "synthetic" truths and his concept of the "synthetic a priori", Beck attempted to clarify Kant's reasoning by exploring whether synthetic judgements should be made analytic, as well as whether Kant incorrectly identified some "contingent judgements" as "necessary judgements". He further observed that Kant's utilization of the term "synthetic" appears to convey different meanings in Kant's writings on transcendental logic as compared to his writings on the theory of general logic. Beck observed further that this divergence in meaning accounts for the unfortunate confusion in the minds of many students who explore translations of Kant's works from the original german into english.

Beck also asserted that Kant's Critique of Practical Reason has been largely neglected by modern readers and sometimes supplanted in the minds of many scholars by the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. He claimed that a complete understanding of Kant's moral philosophy is most easily attained by reviewing Kant's "second critique" which puts forth an analysis of the concepts of both freedom and practical reason. In his A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1961) Beck asserts that Kant's "second critique" serves to weave these divers strands into a unified pattern for his theory on moral authority in general.

In his Six Secular Philosophers (1966), Beck also endeavored to explore the general characteristics of a secular philosophy and whether such a philosophy can be formulated to accommodate religious beliefs and values. Beck observed that while an exact or precise conceptualization of a secular philosophy might be elusive, a secular philosophy is likely to require an appeal to an independence of thought. In Beck's view it should also incorporate certain aspects of religious thought as well. With this in mind, Beck identified several "families" of secular philosophers. In his first group Beck calls our attention to philosophers who placed limits on the scope, validity and content of religious belief by an appeal to scientific and philosophic endeavors. He identifies Baruch Spinoza, David Hume and Kant in this grouping. In his second grouping, Beck identified Frederich Nietzsche, William James and George Santayana, each of whom explored the relationship of religious values in general to other values in life. Beck asserted that Kant ultimately could not embrace Spinoza's embrace of substance or his appeal to monism. According to Beck, Kant agreed instead with Hume that a scientific interpretation of nature cannot serve by itself to confirm religious belief. According to Beck, Kant also parted ways with Hume, however, by insisting that a different rational basis for religious thought can be found in mankind's moral consciousness. Over the years, Beck was praised by his students for his charm and wit. Even after his formal retirement in 1979 he continued to meet with informal gatherings of aspiring young scholars in an effort to share his unique insights into Kant's works until 1996. He was often observed to joke that his prize for an award in teaching excellence was rejected as "nontaxable" by the Internal Revenue Service because it was more appropriately categorized as "unearned".

Honours
In addition to receiving fellowships from the Rosenwald Fund in 1937, the Guggenheim Foundation in 1957, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, and the American Council of Learned Societies in 1964, Beck was the first recipient of the University Of Rochester's Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1962.

In addition, Beck was the recipient of several honorary degrees from several leading scholarly institutions including:Hamilton College, Emory University and the university of Tubingen.

In 2001 Beck was honored by several prominent scholars and the philosopher Predrag Cicovaki with the publication of Kant's Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. The leading scholar of German philosophy Walter Kaufmann also paid special tribute to Beck's scholarship in his work Goethe, Kant and Hegel in 1980.

Death
Beck retired in 1979 and died in 1997 at age 83 in Rochester, New York.

Books

 * Philosophic Inquiry: An Introduction to Philosophy (1952)
 * A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (1961)
 * On History (1963)
 * Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965)
 * Six Secular Philosophers (1966)
 * 18th-Century Philosophy (1966) Editor: Lewis White Beck
 * Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (1969)
 * Kant's Theory of Knowledge Editor: Lewis White Beck (1974)
 * The Actor and the Spectator (1975)
 * Essays on Kant and Hume (1978)
 * Mr. Boswell dines with Professor Kant (1979)
 * Essays by Lewis White Beck: Five Decades as a Philosopher (1998) Editor: Predrag Cicovaki

Archived works

 * The Lewis White Beck Papers collection was gifted to the University of Rochester for archival purposes by Professor Beck in 1960, 1965, 1969 and 1975. The manuscripts and notes contained within the collection are accessible to scholars and research students within the University of Rochester's Rare Books and Special Collections Library upon request.
 * The Lewis White Beck manuscripts of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy Collection at the University of Delaware contains various drafts, galley proofs, page proofs and the published edition of Professor Beck's translations and editing of Immanuel Kant's work as completed during his tenure at Delaware University from 1943-1948 and is open both to researchers and scholars.

Professional affiliations
Lewis White Beck was both an active member and a member emeritus of the American Philosophical Association. He served as President of the American Philosophical Association- Eastern Division in 1971 as well as the chairman of its board of officers (1974-1977). He also served as the president of the North East Society for 18th Century Studies in 1974.

title: Lewis White Beck


text:
DVONN

DVONN is a two-player strategy board game in which the objective is to accumulate pieces in stacks. It was released in 2001 by Kris Burm as the fourth game in the GIPF Project. DVONN won the 2002 International Gamers Award and the Games magazine Game of the Year Award in 2003.

Equipment
DVONN is played on a board with 49 spaces. The board has a hexagonal layout 5 hexes wide. Equivalently, the board can be considered to be a hexagonal shape with three intersecting nodes on four sides, and nine nodes on two longer sides opposite each other. These nodes are connected by a triangular grid, similar to other games in the GIPF Project.

The set includes 49 colored pieces. One player has 23 black pieces to play, while the other player has 23 white pieces. There are also 3 neutral red pieces, called DVONN pieces.

Object
The object of the game is to control more pieces than your opponent at the end of the game.

Game phases
The game starts with an empty board and proceeds in two phases: first the players take turns filling the board in the placement phase, then players build stacks of pieces during the movement phase. To start, players determine which one moves first; that player is assigned two of the red DVONN pieces and the twenty-three white pieces. The other player is assigned one DVONN piece and the twenty-three black pieces.

Placement
During the first phase, the players place their pieces on the board, starting with the three red DVONN pieces. Pieces can be placed on any unoccupied space. White starts, and the players alternate. So Black is the first to place a piece of their own color. The first phase ends when all pieces are placed on the board, filling it completely.

Movement
Players build stacks of pieces during the second phase by moving pieces and stacks onto other pieces or stacks.

Relevant definitions:
 * 1) Stack mobility is determined by the number of surrounding stacks. If a stack is surrounded by 6 adjacent stacks, it is immobile and cannot be moved.
 * 2) A stack is owned by a player if their color is on top.
 * 3) The height of a stack h is equal to the number of pieces in the stack. In this phase, "stacks" and "pieces" are used interchangeably, with the understanding that a piece is simply a stack with one member or height h = 1.

During the movement phase:
 * 1) The white player takes the first move in the movement phase. Because the board is completely filled, the white player must move a white piece on the perimeter of the board as the first move.
 * 2) The height h of a stack determines the number of spaces that stack will move. In the illustrated example, the only legal move for the black-owned stack of two at D3 is two spaces to the right to F3, denoted  The white-owned stack of nine pieces at I5 is effectively immobile, as there are no legal moves.
 * 3) All moves must follow a straight line; most interior spaces have six potential directions for movement, while the perimeter spaces have four directions, and the corner spaces have three. The triangular-gridded board illustrates this clearly.
 * 4) Stacks cannot be moved onto an empty space. All moves must terminate on an occupied space. However, stacks may jump over empty or occupied spaces.
 * 5) Single DVONN pieces cannot be moved, but they can be moved once they are part of a stack. For example, the black-owned stack at C2 could be moved on top of the DVONN piece at F2:
 * 6) After each move, all stacks that are not connected via adjoining stacks to a DVONN pieces (or stacks with a DVONN piece) are removed from the board. For instance, if the white piece at F1 is moved to the DVONN piece at F2, that disconnects the black piece at G1, and it would be removed from the board. Similarly, the move  would disconnect the white stack of two at K4 and remove it from the board, which would not be advantageous for the white player.

Passing and game end
A player is not allowed to pass unless no legal moves are available. The game ends when both players have no legal moves. To determine the winner, each player collects their owned stacks into a single tower. The winner is the player with the higher tower. The game ends in a draw in case both players own an equal number of stones in their tower.

The maximum possible number of moves in the game is 97 (49 for placement and 48 in play, passes are not counted). In competition, each player typically gets 15 minutes for the entire game in real-life tournaments, or 10 minutes for online tournaments.

Strategy
The rules of DVONN can be learned in a few minutes. The main factor needed to win is to be in control of the game. The basic strategy of the game is given on the GIPF Project website. The more advanced strategy tips are derived from the general strategy guidelines developed by the DVONN guild at the BrettspielWelt game site. In 2003, 2004, and 2008 the game developer, Kris Burm, organized a real life DVONN world championship.

Placement phase
Many beginner players place their pieces at the start of the game without a clear objective. However, placement is as major a factor in winning as the movement phase. While it is not possible to guarantee victory with a strong setup, it is possible to have no chance of winning by placing your stones badly.

Pieces should be placed with three main goals in mind: spaces by DVONN pieces, spaces by the side, and general density. The first objective is to place pieces by DVONN pieces, thereby keeping them safe from potential separation. Keeping at least three pieces by each DVONN piece helps defend them from potential attack. Next, pieces that are surrounded cannot move; therefore, having pieces along the side to start the game is valuable. Such pieces should also be in position to free other pieces on the inside. Finally, lumping groups of one's own pieces together is usually poor strategy. It is desirable to capture on every move, or at least take a DVONN piece; keeping all of one's pieces together often makes this difficult. Spreading pieces out across the board also increases the chance of maintaining a short (and therefore highly mobile) stack into endgame, where it may be moved into position for a crucial capture.

It may also be possible to string a line of one's own pieces across the board up and down. Play almost always separates along this line; pieces on one side of a string that has no DVONN piece are usually doomed. An additional advantage of placing stones connected in a line is that moving a stone on either end of the line will free another own stone for movement.

Having an even distribution of the DVONN pieces over the board is usually recommended for novice players, since this way they will be less vulnerable against groups of stones being lost by a cut off. Having all 3 red Dvonn pieces grouped together near the edge almost guarantees a win for an experienced player playing with white.

Movement phase
The first few moves should correct any place where your position must be fixed: helping or moving pieces that could become isolated and moving outside pieces in order to give inside ones mobility. To go for a victory, one should try to recognize if it is possible to isolate part of the board from all the red DVONN pieces in such a way that the isolated part will contain more of the opponents stones than your own. Preferably, always play stones towards the DVONN pieces rather than away from them.

Capturing pieces that could capture a DVONN piece can be important, as a moving DVONN piece controlled by the opponent can isolate a large group of pieces. However, mobility is the most important aspect of DVONN; one needs to keep one's options open. Building a tall stack early in the movement phase is a mistake. Most often, the game is won by the player who is capable of making the last move(s). Maintaining some single stones until the end phase is, therefore, very often a good strategy. As a general rule one can state that using a tower to take a single stone of the opponent usually is one of the better moves, since this preserves own singles. A second general rule for selecting which move to make is that you should not make a move that the opponent cannot prevent you from making at a later time.

A very common mistake among beginners is that they are stacking own stones on top of each other in an attempt to prevent losing stones by being cut off by the opponent. However, since the game is all about mobility, this usually is a bad thing, since by stacking two of their own stones, instead of capturing an opponent's stone, they are effectively losing one stone. Only when a really large group of own stones is at risk, or in the end-phase of the game, should one consider placing own stones on top of each other. In any other situation, it is better to just give up the stone(s) in risk of being isolated and play offensive moves elsewhere and make the opponent lose a similar or preferably larger number of stones on another part of the board.

Taking a DVONN piece is especially desirable if it is possible to move it toward one's own pieces and away from one's opponent's. However, every capture counts, so big captures and maintaining mobility is more important than just taking DVONN pieces. A similar rule applies here as is the case for placing own stones on top of each other. When a DVONN piece is taken, the opponent is not losing a stone, which means that effectively you are set back one stone in the stonecount compared to the opponent. Therefore, one should take a DVONN piece only if one has a plan with it to gain a larger advantage, or if one needs to prevent the opponent from gaining a significant advantage by moving it.

After move 70 (about 20 moves into the movement phase) the board clears and settles. It becomes much more important to look ahead to see how every move affects the overall situation. Tall stacks are very hard to move, so they should be formed next to (or on) DVONN pieces and out of line of potential captures.

Strategy terminology
DVONN strategy discussions among expert players often use a number of terms to express the game situation. In the Yahoo Gipf discussion group the development of this list of terms was initiated by Alan Kwan and completed by Kris Burm.

Dvonn playing computer programs
There are many computer programs capable of playing Dvonn at a high level. Some of the early ones include: RoRoRo the Bot and Jan's program used to play online at the LittleGolem games site until 2014 and 2016 respectively, and were usually among the top 10 players.
 * dDvonn
 * Dvonner
 * RoRoRo the Bot
 * Jan's Dvonn program

Holtz is a program supporting multiple games, including Dvonn.

Dvonn was the topic of the 2011 CodeCup which produced many high-level computer players, including contest winner PrimaDvonna.

Reviews

 * Pyramid
 * Family Games: The 100 Best

title: DVONN