YINSH

Setup: use five white rings, five black rings and a shared pool of 51 two-sided markers. Draw lots for first player, who plays white. Starting from an empty board, alternate placing one ring on a vacant intersection, including edge intersections, until each has five. Play on intersections rather than inside cells. The three scoring spaces on each side hold removed rings.

Normal move: take a pool marker, put it your color face up inside one of your rings, then move that ring. Leave the marker behind. The ring must travel in a straight line to a vacant intersection; it cannot stay put or turn. Only one new marker is placed at the starting point.

Empty spaces and blockers: a ring may cross any number of vacant intersections before stopping or reaching markers. It cannot jump over a ring of either color. Do not move markers along with the ring or leave new markers at every empty space crossed.

Jump: a ring may cross an uninterrupted group of one or more markers of any colors, but must stop on the first vacant intersection directly after them. It may first cross empty spaces and then jump, but cannot continue across more empty spaces after a jump or jump a second separated group. There must be a legal landing intersection.

Flip: after moving the ring, flip every marker it jumped over, including friendly markers. White becomes black and black becomes white. Do not flip the starting marker, which was not jumped. Markers change faces rather than moving between intersections. Check rows after the movement and flips are complete.

Row and ring: five adjacent markers showing your color in a straight line form a row; rings cannot substitute for markers. Remove the five markers to the pool, then remove any one of your own rings to your scoring area. It need not be the ring just moved. Both removals are mandatory, and you never take an opponent’s ring as the reward.

Longer or multiple rows: from a line longer than five, choose five consecutive markers, leaving the remainder. Separate nonintersecting rows formed together must each be removed with a ring. For intersecting rows choose one, remove it and reassess the board; a row broken by that removal cannot also score using the removed markers.

Opponent rows: your move can create the opponent’s row. They remove their row and one ring before their next normal move. If the same move creates rows for both colors, the active player resolves their own first, then the opponent resolves theirs. Resolving a row does not replace that opponent’s normal move.

Ending: removing a third ring wins immediately. If one move creates both players’ third rows, the active player wins by removing their third ring first. If all markers have been placed before anyone wins, compare rings already removed; the higher number wins and equal numbers draw. Do not count faceup marker majorities instead.

Variant boundary: official Blitz uses the same play rules but ends when a player forms their first five-marker row. Agree on that version before play rather than switching objectives midgame. Standard play retains the three-ring target and the normal placement, movement, flipping and required row-removal sequence.