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Hex board for Go players

Public forum discussion.

#1 · David J Bush

29 Nov 2003

Here is a 3-d image of a Hex board made of triangles instead of hexagons. Players place stones on the intersections, as in Go. I used the freeware POV-Ray to generate the image. I modified someone else's source code for a Go board. I already posted about this in the thread "posting pictures to profile" in the main forum, but since then I made a few small improvements in the image.

#2 · Alan Turing

29 Nov 2003

Neat! Mind if I use that pattern (not the image, just the idea w/ the triangular grid) in my test images for the wiki?

#3 · David J Bush

29 Nov 2003

Of course you can use that pattern, Alan. I think I missed the copyright by a few thousand years. :-) Although there may be a mixed reaction from the "Hex public" about that...

#4 · Tim Shih

29 Nov 2003

hi, my blood circulates faster when I see this hex board than when I see a Playboy magazine. :)

#5 · dj

30 Nov 2003

It is so 'Escheresque'. I think a real game on that board would need a healthy dose of a psychedelic nourishment of some sort.

#6 · Alan Turing

30 Nov 2003

Well, that settles it, I think. The reaction of the average Hex player is mixed -- to be exact, something between sexual excitement and artistic vertigo. ;)

#7 · Tasmanian Devil

30 Nov 2003

Could it be the same reaction with different descriptions?

#8 · dj

1 Dec 2003

hmmm, reminds me of a time with a trapeze and a lovely young blond.......

#9 · Alan Turing

1 Dec 2003

Yeah, I remember how you used to sit on the stairs and look up at her for hours. I even took a picture of it but there seems to have been something wrong with the camera.

#10 · Herb Doughty

2 Dec 2003

David, Thanks! This board certainly turns me on.

I have enjoyed 19x19 hex boards with this design at for at least 30 years. I am not sure whether I had used this design before I came to Berkeley in 1967. I do remember John Givins and I making paper hex boards of this design for use by our go club members around that time. Perhaps I got the idea from him. John and Tim and other strong go players played a lot of hex at my home in those days. I believe it was Christmas of 1973 that a friend gave me the nice wooden board that I now use.

The most hex beautiful board I ever saw was a labor of love by Phil Shoptaugh. It used triangles of a nice neutral wood with Ebony, Ash(?), and Cocobola (for edges and short diagonal). Unfortunately it was a casualty of the 1991 Oakland Fire :-(

Besides Wooden boards we used a lot of recording sheets.

We found that the triangle boards seemed to make it a lot easier to remember patterns templates and board positions.

Perhaps part of the turn on for Tim and I, is memory of games with each other and with our friends in days of yore.

-- Herb

#11 · dj

3 Dec 2003

No Alan, I dont think anything was wrong with the camera, I think it was on the trapeze I mentioned!

#13 · David J Bush

15 May 2013

FYI here is a POVray Hex image, now on Boardgamegeek, possibly the same one I used to show on Geocities.

#14 · Dvd Avins

16 May 2013

It's hard to tell from the perspective, but I think this is a square board with one orientation of diagonal lines drawn and the other not. Each triangle is 45-45-90. I would find it easier to play on with the symmetry of a hex board (rhombus board) and equilateral triangles.

#15 · David J Bush

2 Jun 2013

Hard to tell? Here is the full size image, which is what I see when I click the above link. See the lines on the table which the board is lying on top of. Does the board look square, or rhombus? See the triangles that make up the grid. Do they look like one of the angles is 90 degrees?
!http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic36544.jpg!
Maybe you saw a lower resolution version?

#16 · Ignatius J Reilly

2 Jun 2013

Assuming the stones are circular in shape, it is not possible that the grid is composed of 45-45-90 triangles, as Dvd A. suggests. The triangles are clearly equilateral.