Arimaa - Tips & Strategies

The Elephant is a very important part of most attacks and defenses, so it’s nice to be able to tie your opponent’s down. Two of the most common ways to do this are the Frame, wherein a piece is stuck on a trap, with only a single piece in support, so that if the supporter moves the piece on the trap is lost and the hostage, where a piece is frozen within flipping distance of a trap, so that if the trap is abandoned it can be captured.

Frames: These usually require the elephant to be the piece in support to prevent capture, as weaker pieces can often be pulled away. To use a frame effectively, one needs to prevent the opponent from breaking it by either pulling or pushing one of the blocking pieces away, this can quickly lead to trap loss. Another thing that often needs to be done is to rotate strong pieces out of the frame to fight in other areas of the board. Ideally you can tie your opponent’s elephant down defending a horse with only a horse and seven small pieces (dog, cat, rabbit) or two horses and four small pieces, which leaves your elephant and camel free to terrorize the rest of the board. However, be mindful that the elephant does have the ability to leave, don’t leave your camel exposed or you might find yourself in a disadvantageous trade.

Arimaa Introduction to Strategy
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Arimaa/Introduction_to_Strategy

Arimaa has been designed to be playable with a standard Chess set. To do that you should:

* Put four flat objects (like tokens or coins of appropriate size) on the trap squares: c3, c6, f3, f6.

* Substitute Arimaa pieces with Chess counterparts. The exact substitution is completely up to you and your opponent, but here are three most common ways to do it:

Height substitution. A taller piece is considered stronger. I recommend this one as the most obvious. Unfortunately it does not work for some sets with pieces of similar heights.

Center/side substitution. A piece more centered in the Chess opening position is consider stronger. It leads to King > Queen > Bishop > Knight > Rook > Pawn (usually the same as for the first method).

Chess strength substitution. A piece considered more valuable in Chess is taken as stronger. This leads to King > Queen > Rook > Bishop > Knight > Pawn.

Here are a few strategic guidelines regarding equal trades. They assume capturing pieces of the same rank (e.g. a dog for a dog) by both players. They also assume that such a trade does not change positional situation too much (for example does not leave another piece unprotected or trap unguarded).

* If you are ahead by one piece of a kind it is usually beneficial to you to trade one of your pieces for the remaining one.

* If you are ahead by one piece it is usually OK for you to trade pieces of a higher rank than the rank of your advantage. This is because the quantitative advantage becomes more and more important as the board gets emptier.

* If you are ahead by one piece you should not look for trading pieces of lower ranks, but you should not avoid it too much either. Such a trade improves your quantitative advantage but weakens your qualitative advantage.

And of course if you are behind by a piece you should use reversals of the above tips…

This is a good variant for shorter games, and also for comparing relative strengths of pieces against each other. Basically, each side gets 10 points to spend on pieces using the following point system:

Rabbit: 1 point
Cat: 2 points
Dog: 3 points
Horse: 4 points
Camel: 5 points
Elephant: 6 points

After each side has spent their ten points, then set up and play as normal, except with the fewer pieces you have chosen.

This house rule was provided by the game’s creator, Omar Syed.