KrabceK - a game of skill and chance

Krabcek - a game of skill and chance.

Krabcek (the spellings Krabcheck, Crabcheck, Crabcek, or Crapcheck are incorrect, but should also bring you to this site) is a game for two players aged 12 and up. The board is a labyrinth made from sixteen tiles, which are rearranged for every game (there are over 8 million variations).
Each player has seven pieces: 4 Skinnyboys, 2 Middlemen and 1 Bigboy.
Each piece may only move through those paths in the labyrinth that are
wide enough for it.

The object of the game is:
•To make a three-piece tower OR
•To block your opponent so that he cannot move
Once the basic principles have been mastered, an average game takes 20 to 30 minutes.

For many years, Englishman Paul Clark has been making quirky Beckettian one-man theatre and performing it in countries around the world - picking up a couple of awards along the way. A late developer, he attended a dismal public school in Somerset, and two universities (reading philosophy and maths), but left without taking a degree (it was the 1960s, after all). Then followed various jobs in London and New York of which the most interesting was working with heroin addicts. In 1978 he went to Amsterdam where he has lived every since, now with a wife (Jan Michael, English and a writer).

At school Paul’s favourite subject was maths, and an innovative use of mathematics has coloured all his projects, not to mention his life. Nowadays, besides theatre, he performs short pieces for conferences, etc., as well as working part-time as English news-reader for the Dutch world service, Radio Netherlands.

For twenty years, a major obsession has been designing simple square and hexagonal forms that produce different patterns according to their orientation. This has led to exhibitions of artworks, various educational projects and, finally to developing the game Krabcek.
Three years ago a friend of his suggested turning the material into a game.

“Within a week,” says Paul, “I had flung together a rough prototype and formulated a set of rules. Over the first year, the material and rules were refined, mainly in Café de Jaren in Amsterdam, as a steadily growing pool of enthusiastic friends and strangers came to play the game.”

Paul himself gets withdrawal symptoms if he doesn’t play Krabcek at least once a day. He’s probably still the best player of the game (like chess and backgammon, the more you play, the better you become) but one or two of his more regular opponents are becoming a serious threat.

Glossary:

a-h tile: the tile occupying row a and column h. (So also a-h tile, b-g tile etc)
Alleys: boxes that are only big enough for Skinnyboys.
Avenues: boxes that are big enough for all types of piece.
Big Stack: a Middleman on a Bigboy.
Bigboy: the biggest piece.
Block win: if you cannot move anywhere with the number you have thrown, you have lost. A Block win for your opponent.
Dead-end: any box or line of boxes that doesn’t lead anywhere.
Fatal Four: while there are special things you can do with 5 or 6, 4 is the highest throw that has to be walked. 90% of all Block wins end with a 4 for the loser.
Gate-exit: any box that is next to a gate. (There are 11 ‘Alley-exits’ and 5 ‘Street-exits).
Gates: the square boxes at the junction of four tiles. Each player chooses 4 gates through which he can bring on his pieces.
Island: any small group of boxes not connected to the rest of the board.
Krabcek win: the first player to land a Skinnyboy on a Middleman on his Bigboy has a Krabcek win.
Lay-by: a one-box cul-de-sac, often found alongside an avenue. Lay-bys are the same size and shape as gates.
Little Stack: a Skinnyboy on a Middleman.
Loaded gun: when a player has a piece on one of his own gates it’s called a loaded gun, because if he throws a 5 he can Fly-5 it to one of his opponent’s empty gates.
Middleman: the middle-sized piece.
Skinnyboy: the smallest piece.
Street-gate: a gate that has one or more Street-exits.
Streets: boxes that are only big enough for Middlemen and Skinnyboys.
Walking: moving a piece from box to box on the throw of the dice. Any move that is not Fly-5 or Switch-6 is a walking move.

Order your copy of Krabcek.

If you buy via the website, the game costs EUR35. Postage and packing are EUR7.50 for the Netherlands, EUR10 for the rest of Europe and EUR15 outside Europe. However many sets you buy in the same order, you pay postage and packing just once. For example, if you order two sets, you pay 2 x EUR35 + EUR7.50 = EUR77.50.
On receipt of the appropriate amount at P.A.J. CLARK, HEMONYSTRAAT 22-WI AMSTERDAM
Postgiro account: 2308490
IBAN: NL67 PSTB 0002 3084 90
BIC: PSTBNL21 (state 'Krabcek'), we will send you your order.
Krabcek is also on sale at 'Het Paard' chess and go shop, Haarlemmerdijk 173, 1013 KH, Amsterdam. Tel 31 (0)20 624-1171, e-mail; info@schaakengo.nl
For more information, please phone Paul Clark - 0031 (0)20 664 7737

Download the rulebook.

spelregels krabcek.pdf (1,2 Mb)

KRABCEK – a short version of the rules
The Krabcek board consists of 16 thick cardboard tiles which are shuffled and relaid for every game. There are nearly nine million variations, so every time you play, you have a different situation to contend with.
One such board is shown below. Ignore the brown areas; play takes place on the orange pathways, moving pieces from box to box on the throw of a dice. Play doesn’t stop at the edge of the board. Leave at g on one side and you come back on at g on the other. Leave on the path between c and d at the top, and you come back on at the same place at the bottom. For example, if Black throws a 5 he can move the piece shown to any of the points marked by the star.

GATES: At the beginning of the game, the board is empty. Players bring on their pieces one at a time through the square boxes, called gates, found where four tiles meet. There are eight of these, always in the same place.
At the start of the game each player chooses four gates as follows; Black chooses one gate, then White chooses two, then Black chooses two, then White chooses two, and the last gate goes to Black. Markers are placed on the gates accordingly, and players may only bring pieces on through their own gates. In the game shown here, Black chose Gate 2, then White chose Gates 5 and 7, then Black chose Gates 1 and 6, then White chose Gates 4 and 8, and Gate 3, on a little four-box island, was left for Black. Note that gates on the edge of the board each need two markers. Gate 7 has a Skinnyboy on it, so the opposite marker is turned over to show that it’s occupied.

PIECES AND MOVES: note that the boxes are of three different widths, as are the pieces. Each player has one Bigboy, two Middlemen, and four Skinnyboys, which he may only move through boxes that are big enough.
THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO WIN. The first player to land a Skinnyboy on a Middleman on a Bigboy wins; a ‘Krabcek’ win. The smaller piece must always land on the bigger piece, which may not be on a gate.
However, pieces may not jump over one another, nor may two pieces stand on the same box. If a piece of either colour is on, say, a White gate, White may not bring on pieces through that gate. As the board fills up with pieces, it gets harder to move. If either player has no legal move with the number he has thrown, he loses; a ‘Block’ win for his opponent.

Fly-5: If you throw a 5 you may fly a piece from a Black gate to a White or vice versa.
Switch-6: Throw a 6 and you may swap two pieces round. They may not be of the same type.
(Although gates are big enough for Bigboys, the boxes next to them never are. So first you need a 1 to bring on your Bigboy, and later a 6 to get it somewhere where a Middleman or Little Stack may land on top.)
Shown below is the situation at the end of a typical game. If White throws 2, 3 or 4 he can make a Krabcek tower and win. With a 6 he must spoil his good position, swapping his Big Stack with the Skinnyboy to the top left. With 5 it’s worse; he has no legal move, and loses.
Copyright © Paul Clark 2004

Solution:
White could easily occupy Black’s third gate, but instead he brings on a Skinnyboy as shown. It looks like a tame move, but the clue here is that Black only has Skinnyboys on the board, and won’t have anything else until he throws a 1. Now, the Switch-6 rule states that a player may not switch pieces of the same type. So if Black throws a 6, he must be able to walk a piece six boxes. As things stood before White’s move, Black could have done this, either with the piece on Gate 7, or with the one on tile b-e. But after this canny move by White, Black will lose the game if he throws a 6 on his next move.



		Welcome to Krabcek.nl, the home page of the new board game Krabcek. Explore the game of Krabcek by clicking on the objects in the room. You can find a glossary, a puzzle, order your copy online, etc.( you can also select a menu item below!). See if you like Krabcek in the 14 move demo game. Have fun!



		Krabcek’s developer, Paul Clark, has been intrigued by tiles and patterns for years. Shown here is a work he made for the "De Bomen van Pythagoras" exhibition in the Mondriaan museum in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. One half of the painting shows an orange pattern on a brown background. In the other half, the tiles have been rearranged to produce the same pattern, only brown on orange. Paul Clark had his first exhibition in Galerie Jansen&Kooy, Amsterdam.



		There are three types of piece: - Skinnyboy (the smallest) - Middleman (medium size) - Bigboy (the largest) And there are three tower combinations: - Little stack is a Skinnyboy on a Middleman - Big stack is a Middleman on a Bigboy - Krabcek is a Skinnyboy on a Middleman on a Bigboy



		The board is set up by arranging sixteen tiles in a square. To see how to do this, download the rules. The resulting labyrinth has 8,945,664 variations.



		Links to websites about board games. www.pushthebutton.nl www.truusentruus.nl bordspellen.verzamelgids.nl boardgames.pagina.nl www.bordspel.com www.spellendoos.nl www.spellengek.nl www.anderspel.nl www.speljournaal.nl



		A piece leaving the board on the left side comes straight back on at the right side. The same goes for the top and bottom. (Effectively this means that the game is played on the surface of a doughnut-shaped object.)