11. Yinsh

I don't know how Kris Burm does it. Over the last eight years, he has managed to devise a series of the most inventive, creative two-player abstracts I've ever had the pleasure to play.

When Gipf was first released, I rejoiced. At the time I had been a student of two-player abstracts for quite awhile. That's not to say I was (or ever will be) very good at playing them; I just appreciated the artistic merit of a solid design. Gipf was something special and it touched me on an emotional level.

When the rest of the series appeared, most of them evoked a similar sense of awe, but none of them ever came close to knocking the original off its perch.

That is, until I played Yinsh.

Yinsh is an x-in-a-row game that uses pieces that you might find familiar if you've ever played Othello. The exciting part of Yinsh is how Burm uses rings to (a) introduce pieces to the board, (b) flip pieces on the board, and (c) create a fresh, tense sensation of balance by their removal. See, the more successful you are, the fewer rings you have and, consequently, the less powerful you are. Unlike capture games, where the strong get stronger, Yinsh turns the tables brilliantly.

It took alot of soul-searching to determine which one would be labeled my favorite. In the end, I had to allow the new kid on the block time to earn its place in history and gave the edge to the original. The fact that it was such a close call is testament to my appreciation for Yinsh.