I am curious what you thought about it if you have played it.

Seems interesting.

http://www.marksteeregames.com/Grand_Hex_rules.pdf

I've not played it, but it seems an unnecessary more complicated version of Y.

Why not just play Y :-) ?

For me it seems like the first move advantage is even more tangible in Y than in Hex. Because of the Y board shape, a central stone is already really close to the edge unless the board is huge. This leaves a bunch of extra unused cells in the corners when it becomes clear who has won. I would always prefer to play Hex over Y, so then the question becomes “why not just play Hex”.

I don't think Grand Hex is just a more complicated version of Y - but it is probably the only game that makes a Y-like goal work on the Hex board. Hex could not be played on the Y board, and Y would require some serious modifications to be played on the Hex board. Those modifications would turn Y into Grand Hex, which is probably the designer's intention from the beginning.

If you connect your sides you usually can easy connect to one of opponents side, so this game can be similar to hex.

I think that the easy inventibility and variation of connection games is both their blessing and curse.  The work done by folks like Matthew Seymour and David Ploog to investigate individual games deeply, and develop some theory for them, is a lot more interesting than the endless spinning off of variations that no-one ever plays… even though I understand the creative joy in dreaming up those variations.  It just seems too easy to always be thinking up a new twist, in such a way hardly any game ever gets played.  I always joked that if you ask a mathematician to sit down and play a game of hex with you, he'll rather tell you about a variant he made up that can, in theory, be played on infinite dimensional CW complexes…

jsiehler, I think this is part of the promise of the breakthroughs around AlphaZero—that they will eventually allow you to easily generate deep AI for new games and help you investigate the promise and interest of different rule-sets.  Or even if you're the only one who will ever like your game, you'll be able to study it with a master to your heart's content.

For sure!  That's one of the developments I'm excited to see.

Spartacus, there is a game which makes a Y-like goal work on the Hex board. It’s yXy, which may be played at Gamerz.net, where it has been installed and presented by Cameron Browne. In this game the short diagonal serves as a common edge shared by the adjacent equilateral triangles forming an hex board. Two Y games are played simultaneously, one in each triangle, while at the same time players try to connect the opposite edges of the whole board as in hex. The winner is the player reaching two among these three different goals. Of course the hex paths interfere with those made to win in the Y subgames.

I wonder what useless application this comment copy-pasted from ;)

???

It's an error for which I apologize. I think it comes from a copy I made from the play by email server. I'm very akward these tool.

No worries, mouchet. It has happened to many of us!

It's a pity that we can't edit our posts.

It would be nice if there was a grace period (say 1 hour), where one could edit one's post.