Beginning Arimaa Paperback – June 12, 2009

Beginning Arimaa is part guide book, part philosophical treatise and part love story. Yes, love story. The author is clearly passionate about the game Arimaa, as am I. The book is imbued with the author's love of the game and his keen insights into what might make this game special. The chapters cover the familiar such as tactics and strategy, and the usual analysis of actual games. Comparison with other games such as Twixt and Abalone is also useful to the reader wanting to understand how Arimaa works. It also ventures into some speculation on what might make Arimaa still engaging in the long distant future - what might find it a place alongside chess and go. Building on Mark Thompson's excellent paper on what makes a good, or great abstract strategy game, Junhke adds the idea of tension and the economy of a game. How a game builds and holds tension and how to play economically with your moves. His insight into what Thompson calls "clarity" (how far one can see into the game) is of special interest. We do not just play the person accross from us Junhke claims, we also "play that invisible part of our soul". Perfect clarity allows machines to out-think humans. Total opacity prevents human engagment since we don't have a clue where to start in a game, or what strategic goals will bring us the ultimate goal. We need, Junhke tells us, to find the "sweet spot" between extremes. It is the equasion between clarity and opacity, or the hidden depth, that drives the player to search for deeper strategies and purpose for their tactical assaults. The author also, correctly in my opinion, does not provide opening and endgame theory as guides often do. To win at chess, it is almost essential to read every guide since the Game and Playe of the Cheste of 1474! Junhke wants the joy of creative thinking and discovery to remain with the reader after the book is finished. His goal is to teach a way of approaching the deep structure of the game and to provide a way of finding pleasure in play. Apart from some chapter titles and their questionable justification (which doesn't negatively affect the reading or comprehension) the book is a must for fans of Arimaa,those curioius about the game, or anyone interested in how abstracts work.

I caught the Arimaa "bug" two months ago, but after playing close to 100 games my rating plateaued. I had the distressing feeling that I was going to have to play a LOT of games before I started seeing any new improvements.I bought this book as well as "Arimaa Strategies and Tactics" for my birthday. Wow! My rating jumped around 100 points from reading this book, and I haven't topped out yet! (Your mileage may vary; I'm not a novice but my rating is only a few hundred points above the beginners.)One of the things I learned from the book is that not everyone has to come out of the gate with both guns blazing. I'm a control player, just like the author was at the time he wrote the book. (I think since that time he's become more aggressive.) I like stifling my opponent and cutting off all his options. Before I was feeling guilty that I should go on the offensive more, and reading this book helped me feel more comfortable that, right now, that's just not my style. Also Juhnke says he never tries to calculate a forced capture more than two moves out. Again, I always assumed that that was something that I needed to be able to do to be a world champion. Now I can just relax and have fun and play Arimaa, which is how life should be.

I am a relative novice at Arimaa with about sixty games played on their website. After starting up the bot ladder I quickly discovered that Arimaa is (1) fun and (2) not as easy to play well as it looks. Hoping to improve my game, I ordered this book authored by one of the linchpins of the Arimaa community.I was not disappointed. The strengths of the book come from its clear exposition of beginning and intermediate principles backed up by ample game examples and expert analysis. The author also imparts the history and philosophy of Arimaa throughout, which I found interesting as well. Bottom line, my game improved and I understood what I was doing more. The ideas discussed are fundamental to the game, making this a worthwhile investment for any newer player.

The author is one of the top 3 players of the game in the world. What I really liked about the book is that the author alternates chapters with strategy and background of the game, including computer complexity, comparison with chess and go, history of the game, etc. His choice of chapter titles is quite amusing, such as Rabbit Advancement/Theory Advancement, Long-Term Capture Tactics/Long-Term Popularity where each pair talks about Arimaa strategy and then Arimaa as a game in general.The strategies gave me a better understanding of the game outside what I had already read and studied about Arimaa through play and the online strategy wiki.

It has a misprint - a white straight line running downward from the top of the printed text on approximately 50 pages with odd numbers: say, page 3,5,7, 23 and so on until 97. It makes you guess some letters in words and investigate what is really written almost in every line. Well, logic helps, since ARIMAA is a logical game, and you are supposed to be good at such things if you buy this book. Yet for the sake of clarity it should be said. Inconvenience does its business and I mark only three stars out of five. As to the contents of the book - everything is ok.

You'll need this if you buy the Arimaa set like I did. Well, more WANT than really need. It gives you a good history on how the game got started 12 years ago and some of the famous games already considered constructive, and the tactics and strategy tips are good too.

This book was excellent and it opened up a lot of things I did not understand about this game as well as giving you some practical basic strategies to help you play the game more competitively, unfortunately I can't seem to get a second player to play the board game, but thanks to Amazon I was able to get an android app for it.

A good book for beginners. Juhnke does a good job explaining his passion and knowledge of the game. This is where you should start then move on to Jean Daligaults book on Arimaa.

Covers beginning the game, right up to advanced strategies. Very clear and easy to follow. The game itself is easy to learn and surprisingly deep.