Learning Opportunities

This puzzle can be solved using the following concepts. Practice using these concepts and improve your skills.

Statement

This is a port from the board game Yinsh
Click here for more detailed rules.
Click here for the notation system.
Click here for the referee.

Rules

Pieces:
- Each player has 5 rings.
- There is a pool of markers with a total of 51 markers available.
Goal:
- The goal of the game is to remove 3 of your own rings. To remove 1 ring, you must form a row of 5 markers.
Resolution of a turn:
- First turn:
  - On the first turn you are free to choose whether you want to receive legal moves or not, to do this you simply have to output "yes" or "no".
- Placement phase:
  - On this phase, you must place your rings, the white player goes first, black follows, this is done until all the rings from both players are in play (10 rings total).
  - Black player has an optional action on his first placement, he can choose to "STEAL" white move, this will replace white first ring by a black ring, to do this you simply need to output "STEAL".
- Movement phase:
  - On this phase, the player must move a ring.
  - Once a ring has moves, a marker of its color will be placed in its position before the move.
  - The move of the ring must be done on a straight line.
  - The move must end on an empty cell.
  - A ring can jump over N empty spaces.
  - A ring can jump over N markers as long as they are lined up.
  - A ring can jump over N empty space and N markers as long as they are lined up, once the line of markers end, the ring cant go further.
  - A ring can not jump over rings.
- Flipping phase:
  - If you moved and didn't jump over any markers, this phase won't happen.
  - If you jumped over markers, all the markers that have been jumped over are flipped, that is, all white markers become black and all black markers become white.
  - The marker that has been placed on movement will not be flipped.
- Removal phase:
  - Once you get a row of 5 markers of your own color (this row must be done in a straight line), you must remove them.
  - The markers removed are added back to the markers pool
  - After the markers are removed, you must also remove a ring.
  - If you form a row of more than 5 markers, you must choose which markers to remove.
  - It is possible to form 2 (or more) rows of 5 markers with only 1 move, if they don't intersect, you must remove all those rows, if they do intersect, you must choose which markers to remove.
  - If you form a row of 5 markers for your opponent, he will remove these markers and a ring, before his move, he may choose which markers and ring to remove.
  - If you form a row for you and a row for your opponent, you will remove yours as normal.
  - If you have 2 removed rings and have formed 2 rows of rings, you must only remove 1 row, because you only need to remove one more ring to win.
- End phase:
  - The game ends once a player removes 3 rings (form 3 rows of 5 markers), this will make the player win.
  - If both players have 2 rings removed and you make a row of 5 of your markers and a row of 5 of enemy markers, you will win, because you will remove the markers first
  - If all markers are placed before any player removes 3 rings, the game will end, the player with more removed rings win, if both have the same number of removed rings, the game will end in a draw

Output notation:
- To indicate a cell on the board, you must first output the letter (indicates the vertical row), followed by a digit (horizontal row).
- You must put an hyphen ("-") between the coordinates of a move, example ("f2-f5").
- To indicate a row, you must output the first marker and the last, example ("e4-i4") or ("i4-e4"), order does not matter
- To indicate a remove of a ring you must use an "x", example ("xe4-i4xg2") this would remove the markers placed on e4 up to i4 and remove the ring placed at g2.
- To separate moves you must use a ";", example ("h3-h5;xe4-i4xh5"), this will move ring from h3 to h5, remove row e4 up to i4 and remove the ring at h5.
- You can start a turn by having to remove and then move a piece, example("xg2-g6xk7;d1-c1")

Grid:
- Game is played on an hex grid. Grid size will always remain the same.
- The grid coordinates are represented in the image below:

Examples

What is a line

The image below shows all possible directions that you can make a line:

Red line: Represents a line of 4
Yellow line: Represents a line of 5
Blue line: Represents a line of 5
Pink line: Represents a line of 2
Black line: Represents a line of 5
Green line: Represents a line of 5

Placement phase moves:

(c6): First player plays on (c6)
(steal): Second decides to steal his move so he puts a ring there(steal)
(j6): First player plays on (j6)
(b6): Second player plays on (b6)

Movement moves

(b3-c3): Places a marker at (b3) and moves the ring at (b3) to (c3).
(h5-j5): CPlaces a marker at (h5), moves the ring at (b3) to (j5) and flips the marker that has been jumped over (i5).

Movement with removal moves

(h7-c7;xh5-h9xi9): Places a marker at (h7), moves the ring at (h7) to (c7), flips the marker that has been jumped over (d7), removes the markers from (h5) to (h9) and removes the ring at (i9).
(f7-f2;xd4-h4xf2): Places a marker at (f7), moves the ring at (f7) to (f2), flips the markers that have been jumped over (f5-f3), removes the markers from (d4) to (h4) and removes the ring at (f2).

Remove move remove

(xe7-i11xd9;i7-i11;xi6-i10xh4): Removes the markers from (e7) to (i11), removes the ring at (d9), places a marker at (i7), moves the ring at (i7) to (i11), flips the markers that have been jumped over (i8-i10), removes the markers from (i6) to (i10) and removes the ring at (h4).

Victory Conditions

Remove 3 rings, this can be done by removing 3 rows of 5 markers.
Have more rings removed before all markers are used.

Loss Conditions

You don't have legal moves.
You don't remove a row of 5 markers on your turn.
You don't respond in time or output an unrecognized command.

Game Input

Initial input

First line: The id of the player(myId)

Input for one game turn

First line: count: the number of rows on hex grid.
Next count lines: characters representing one line of your grid, left to right(viewer perspective). (.: empty, R: your ring, S: your marker, r: enemy ring, s: enemy marker).
Next actionCount: the number of legal actions for this turn.
Next actionCount lines: string represting the action.

Output

A single line containing the action you want to do. Example "a2-a3", to display messages you need to output the action followed by MSG message, example "a2-a3 MSG message".

Constraints

Response time first turn is ≤ 1000 ms.
Response time per turn is ≤ 100 ms.

Join

A higher resolution is required to access the IDE

Learning Opportunities

Statement

Rules

Pieces:

Goal:

Resolution of a turn:

Output notation:

Grid:

Examples

What is a line

Placement phase moves:

Game Input