Two-Player Games

ZÈRTZ is the third game in the GIPF Project of six abstract strategy games. The game features a shrinking board and an object that promotes sacrifice combinations. Since neither player owns on-board pieces, maintaining the initiative is of fundamental importance.

YINSH is an abstract strategy board game by game designer Kris Burm. It is the fifth game to be released in the GIPF Project. At the time of its release in 2003, Burm stated that he intended it to be considered as the sixth and last game of the project, and that the game which he had not yet released, PÜNCT, would be logically the fifth game . However, an entry in his blog on 19 June 2005 suggests that he is reconsidering this.

Xiangqi (Chinese: 象棋, p Xiàngqí), also called Chinese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in China, and is in the same family as Western (or international) chess, chaturanga, shogi, Indian chess and janggi. Besides China and areas with significant ethnic Chinese communities, xiangqi (cờ tướng) is also a popular pastime in Vietnam.

Oware is an abstract strategy game among the Mancala family of board games (pit and pebble games) played world-wide with slight variations as to the layout of the game, number of players and strategy of play. Its origin is uncertain but is widely believed to be of Akan origin.

Tantrix is a hexagonal tile-based abstract game invented by Mike McManaway from New Zealand. Each of the 56 different tiles in the set contains three lines, going from one edge of the tile to another. No two lines on a tile have the same colour. There are four colours in the set: red, yellow, blue, and green. No two tiles are identical, and each is individually numbered from 1 through 56.

Tafl games are a family of ancient Germanic and Celtic strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers, representing variants of an early Scandinavian board game called tafl or hnefatafl in contemporary literature.

Tâb is the Egyptian name of a running-fight board game played in several Arab countries, or a family of similar board games played in Northern Africa and South-western Asia, from Persia to West Africa and from Turkey to Somalia, where a variant called deleb is played. The game described here was recorded by Edward William Lane in Egypt in the 1820s. A reference to "at-tâb wa-d-dukk" (likely a similar game) occurs in a poem of 1310 CE.

Sugoroku (雙六 or 双六?) refers to two different forms of a Japanese board game, one similar to western backgammon, called ban-sugoroku, and the other similar to western Snakes and Ladders. Sugoroku plays identically to backgammon (it even has the same starting position), except for the following differences:

Stratego /strəˈtiːɡoʊ/ is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual soldier ranks in an army. The objective of the game is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or to capture so many enemy pieces that the opponent cannot make any further moves. Players cannot see the ranks of one another's pieces, so disinformation and discovery are important facets to gameplay.

Space Hulk is a board game for two players by Games Workshop. It was first released in 1989. The game is set in the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000. In the game, a "space hulk" is a mass of ancient, derelict space ships, asteroids, and other assorted space debris. One player takes the role of Space Marine Terminators, Human elite soldiers who have been sent to investigate such a space hulk. The other player takes the role of Tyranid Genestealers, an aggressive alien species which have made their home aboard such a space hulk.

Shogi (将棋, shōgi?) (/ˈʃoʊɡiː/, Japanese:  or ), also known as Japanese chess or the Generals' Game, is a two-player strategy board game in the same family as Western (international) chess, chaturanga, makruk, shatranj and xiangqi, and is the most popular of a family of chess variants native to Japan. Shōgi means general's (shō 将) board game (gi 棋).

Senet (or Senat) is a board game from predynastic and ancient Egypt. The oldest hieroglyph representing a Senet game dates to around 3100 BC. The full name of the game in Egyptian was zn.t n.t ḥˁb meaning the "game of passing".

Sáhkku is a running-fight board game invented by the Sami people. The game is particularly traditional among the Coast Sámi of northern Norway and Russia, but is also known to have been played in other parts of Sápmi, notably in Lapland.

Rithmomachy (or Rithmomachia, also Arithmomachia, Rythmomachy, Rhythmomachy, or sundry other variants; sometimes known as The Philosophers' Game) is a highly complex, early European mathematical board game. The earliest known description of it dates from the eleventh century. A literal translation of the name is "The Battle of the Numbers". The game is much like chess, except most methods of capture depend on the numbers inscribed on each piece.

Quarto is a board game for two players invented by Swiss mathematician Blaise Müller in 1991.

PÜNCT is a two-player strategy board game. It is the sixth (and final) release in the GIPF project of six abstract strategy games, although it is considered the fifth game in the project. It was released in 2005. PÜNCT won the Games Magazine Best Abstract Strategy game for 2007.

Plateau is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Jim Albea.

Patolli (Nahuatl: ) or patole (Spanish: ) is one of the oldest games in America. It was a game of strategy and luck, and very much a game of commoners and nobles alike. It was reported by the conquistadors that Montezuma often enjoyed watching his nobles play the game at court.

Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. There are sixty-four identical game pieces called disks (often spelled "discs"), which are light on one side and dark on the other. Players take turns placing disks on the board with their assigned color facing up. During a play, any disks of the opponent's color that are in a straight line and bounded by the disk just placed and another disk of the current player's color are turned over to the current player's color.

Onyx is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Larry Back in 1995. The game features a rule for making captures, making Onyx unique among connection games.

Obsession is a board game released in 1977 for two players in which the player wins by moving their ten rings along numbered slots. They must get all ten rings into the "safety zone" before their opponent. Each player rolls a pair of dice, and can choose either to move their own rings up, or their opponent's rings down.

Nine Men's Morris is a strategy board game for two players that emerged from the Roman Empire. The game is also known as Nine Man Morris, Mill, Mills, The Mill Game, Merels, Merrills, Merelles, Marelles, Morelles and Ninepenny Marl in English. The game has also been called Cowboy Checkers and is sometimes printed on the back of checkerboards. Nine Men's Morris is a solved game in which either player can force the game into a draw.

Mastermind or Master Mind is a code-breaking game for two players. The modern game with pegs was invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert. It resembles an earlier pencil and paper game called Bulls and Cows that may date back a century or more.

Mad Gab is a game created by Terry White in which there are at least two teams and 2-12 players. Each team has two minutes to sound out three puzzles. The puzzles, also known as mondegreens, contain small words that, when put together, make a word or phrase. For example, "These If Hill Wore" when pronounced quickly sounds like "The Civil War." Another example would be "Eye Mull of Mush Sheen" quickly spoken it sounds like "I'm A Love Machine." There are two levels of difficulties: easy and hard. The faster the puzzles are answered, the more points the players score.

Lost Cities is a 60-card card game, designed in 1999 by game designer Reiner Knizia and published by several publishers. The objective of the game is to mount profitable expeditions to one or more of the five lost cities (the Himalayas, the Brazilian Rain Forest, the Desert Sands, the Ancient Volcanos and Neptune's Realm). The game was originally intended as a 2-player game, but rule variants have been contributed by fans to allow 1 or 2 further players, causing Reiner Knizia himself to later provide semi-official 4-player rules.

Liubo (Chinese: 六博; pinyin: liù bó; Wade–Giles: liu po; literally: "six sticks") is an ancient Chinese board game played by two players. For the rules, it is believed that each player had six game pieces that were moved around the points of a square game board that had a distinctive, symmetrical pattern. Moves were determined by the throw of six sticks, which performed the same function as dice in other race games.

Kamisado is an abstract strategy board game for two players that's played on an 8x8 multicoloured board. Each player controls a set of eight octagonal dragon tower pieces. Each player’s set of dragon towers contains a tower to match each of the colours that appear on the squares of the board (i.e., a brown tower, a green tower, etc.). One player’s towers have gold dragons mounted on the top, while the other player’s towers are topped with black dragons.

Kalah, also called Kalaha or Mancala, is a game in the mancala family invented by William Julius Champion Jr (USA) in 1940. This game heavily favors the starting player, who will always win the three-seed to six-seed versions with perfect play. This game is sometimes also called "Kalahari", possibly by false etymology from the Kalahari desert in Namibia.

A Game of War is a book by Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho that illustrates a game devised by Debord by giving a detailed account of one of their table-top conflicts. It was first published in French as Le Jeu de la Guerre in 1987, but unsold copies were later pulped in 1991, along with other books by Debord, at his insistence when he left his publisher Champ libre. The book was reissued in 2006, with an English translation published by Atlas Press in 2008.

Janggi (including romanizations changgi and jangki), sometimes called Korean chess, is a strategy board game popular in Korea. The game derived from xiangqi (Chinese chess) and is very similar to it, including the starting position of the pieces, and the 9×10 gameboard, but without the xiangqi "river" dividing the board horizontally at the middle.

Isola is a two-player abstract strategy board game. It is played on a 7x7 board which is initially filled with squares, except at the starting positions of the pieces. Both players have one piece; it is in the middle position of the row closest to his/her side of the board.

Games Above Board Great American Trading Company

Hex is a strategy board game played on a hexagonal grid, theoretically of any size and several possible shapes, but traditionally as an 11×11 rhombus. Other popular dimensions are 13×13 and 19×19 as a result of the game's relationship to the older game of Go. According to the book A Beautiful Mind, John Nash (one of the game's inventors) advocated 14×14 as the optimal size.

Hare games are two-player abstract strategy board games that were popular in medieval northern Europe up until the 19th century. In this game, a hare is trying to get past three dogs who are trying to surround it and trap it. The three dogs are represented by three pieces which normally start on one end of the board, and the hare is represented by one piece that usually starts in the middle of the board or is dropped on any vacant point in the beginning of the game.

Guess Who? is a two-player guessing game created by Ora and Theo Coster, also known as Theora Design, that was first manufactured by Milton Bradley in 1979 in Great Britain. It was brought to the United States in 1982.

GIPF is an abstract strategy board game by Kris Burm, the first of six games in his series of games called the GIPF Project. GIPF was recommended by Spiel des Jahres in 1998.

Go (traditional Chinese: 圍棋; simplified Chinese: 围棋; pinyin: wéiqí; Japanese: 囲碁; rōmaji: igo; Korean: 바둑; romaja: baduk; literally: "encircling game") is a board game involving two players, that originated in ancient China more than 2,500 years ago. It was considered one of the four essential arts of a cultured Chinese scholar in antiquity. The earliest written reference to the game is generally recognized as the historical annal Zuo Zhuan (c. 4th century BC).

Ghosts (Finnish: Kummituspeli, Swedish: Spökspelet) is a board game designed by Alex Randolph for two players, released in 1982 by Milton Bradley.

The Game of the Generals, also called GG as it is most fondly called, or simply The Generals, is an educational war game invented in the Philippines by Sofronio H. Pasola, Jr. in 1970. Its Filipino name is "Salpakan." It can be played within twenty to thirty minutes. It is designed for two players, each controlling an army, and a neutral arbiter (sometimes called a referee or an adjutant) to decide the results of "challenges" between opposing playing pieces, that like playing cards, have their identities hidden from the opponent.

Fanorona (Malagasy pronunciation: ) is a strategy board game for two players. The game is indigenous to Madagascar.

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 of the GIPF Project. DVONN won the 2002 International Gamers Award and the Games magazine Game of the Year Award in 2003.

Diamond is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Larry Back. The invention was inspired by the game Kensington, which uses a similar board pattern and game objective. Rules for Diamond were conceived in 1985 and finalized in 1994. Diamond introduces a new board geometry and neutral pieces, with the aim of enhancing the game dynamic and lowering the potential for draws.

Daldøs is a running-fight board game only known from a few coastal locations in Scandinavia, where its history can be traced back to around 1800. The game is notable for its unusual four-sided rolling-pin style dice (stick or barrel dice). In Denmark it is known as daldøs in Northern and Western Jutland (Mors, Thisted and Fanø), and possibly as daldos on Bornholm. In Norway it is known under the name of daldøsa from Jæren, where, unlike in Denmark, a continuous tradition of the daldøs game exists. A rather similar game called sáhkku, using virtually identical dice, is known in a number of variants from the Sea Sami in Northern Norway, Finland and Russia. Otherwise, the closest relatives of this game appear to be the tâb games from Northern Africa and South-western Asia, possibly apart from one unlabelled diagram in a codex from Southern England.

Cross and circle is a board game design used for race games played throughout the world.

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid.

Draughts (UK /ˈdrɑːfts/) or checkers (American English) is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Draughts developed from alquerque. The name derives from the verb to draw or to move.

Camelot is a strategy board game for two players. One of the first games published by Parker Brothers, it was invented late in the 19th century by George S. Parker and originally published under the name Chivalry.

Bul, also called Buul, Boolik or Puluc, is a running-fight board game originating in Mesoamerica, and is known particularly among several of the Maya peoples of the Guatemalan highlands. It is uncertain whether this specific game dates back to the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, or whether instead it developed in the post-colonial era after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores.

Blood Bowl is a fantasy football game created by Jervis Johnson for the British games company Games Workshop as a parody of American Football. The game was first released in 1987 and has been re-released in new editions since. Blood Bowl is set in an alternate version of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, populated by traditional fantasy elements such as human warriors, goblins, dwarves, elves, orcs and trolls.

Blockade is a "the Beat the Barrier" board game for two players, invented by Mirko Marchesi and published by Lakeside in 1975. The newer strategy game Quoridor shares many of the same characteristics as Blockade.

Battleship (also Battleships or Sea Battle) is a guessing game for two players. It is known worldwide as a pencil and paper game which dates from World War I. It was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game in the 1930s, and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967.

Backgammon is one of the oldest board games known. It is a two player game where playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and a player wins by removing all of his pieces from the board before his opponent. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world.

Agon (or Queen's Guard, Queen's Guards, Royal Guards) is a strategy game for two players, played on a 6×6×6 hexagonal gameboard.

Abalone is an award winning two-player strategy board game designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Lévi in 1987. Players are represented by marbles of opposing colors situated on a hexagonal patterned board with the objective being to push six of the opponent's marbles off the edge of the board.