Beginning Arimaa

The author is one of the top 3 players of the game in the world. What I really liked about the book is that the author alternates chapters with strategy and background of the game, including computer complexity, comparison with chess and go, history of the game, etc. His choice of chapter titles is quite amusing, such as Rabbit Advancement/Theory Advancement, Long-Term Capture Tactics/Long-Term Popularity where each pair talks about Arimaa strategy and then Arimaa as a game in general. The strategies gave me a better understanding of the game outside what I had already read and studied about Arimaa through play and the online strategy wiki.

I caught the Arimaa "bug" two months ago, but after playing close to 100 games my rating plateaued. I had the distressing feeling that I was going to have to play a LOT of games before I started seeing any new improvements. I bought this book as well as "Arimaa Strategies and Tactics" for my birthday. Wow! My rating jumped around 100 points from reading this book, and I haven't topped out yet! (Your mileage may vary; I'm not a novice but my rating is only a few hundred points above the beginners.) One of the things I learned from the book is that not everyone has to come out of the gate with both guns blazing. I'm a control player, just like the author was at the time he wrote the book. (I think since that time he's become more aggressive.) I like stifling my opponent and cutting off all his options. Before I was feeling guilty that I should go on the offensive more, and reading this book helped me feel more comfortable that, right now, that's just not my style. Also Juhnke says he never tries to calculate a forced capture more than two moves out. Again, I always assumed that that was something that I needed to be able to do to be a world champion. Now I can just relax and have fun and play Arimaa, which is how life should be.

I am a relative novice at Arimaa with about sixty games played on their website. After starting up the bot ladder I quickly discovered that Arimaa is (1) fun and (2) not as easy to play well as it looks. Hoping to improve my game, I ordered this book authored by one of the linchpins of the Arimaa community. I was not disappointed. The strengths of the book come from its clear exposition of beginning and intermediate principles backed up by ample game examples and expert analysis. The author also imparts the history and philosophy of Arimaa throughout, which I found interesting as well. Bottom line, my game improved and I understood what I was doing more. The ideas discussed are fundamental to the game, making this a worthwhile investment for any newer player.

This book was excellent and it opened up a lot of things I did not understand about this game as well as giving you some practical basic strategies to help you play the game more competitively, unfortunately I can't seem to get a second player to play the board game, but thanks to Amazon I was able to get an android app for it.

It has a misprint - a white straight line running downward from the top of the printed text on approximately 50 pages with odd numbers: say, page 3,5,7, 23 and so on until 97. It makes you guess some letters in words and investigate what is really written almost in every line. Well, logic helps, since ARIMAA is a logical game, and you are supposed to be good at such things if you buy this book. Yet for the sake of clarity it should be said. Inconvenience does its business and I mark only three stars out of five. As to the contents of the book - everything is ok.

A good book for beginners. Juhnke does a good job explaining his passion and knowledge of the game. This is where you should start then move on to Jean Daligaults book on Arimaa.

Excellent !!!

As the first book written about Arimaa, "Beginning Arimaa" is the perfect introduction of this fascinating game to the world. Written in a style that is fun and easy to read, the book digs into the history of the game, why Arimaa is difficult for computers, the goal of the Arimaa challenge, a comparison of Arimaa to other games, as well as Juhnke's speculations about the future of Arimaa. Alternating chapters of the book also cover topics on improving game play by using diagrams to illustrate key concepts discovered so far about Arimaa tactics and strategy laced with Juhnke's analysis and insights. Many positions from the Arimaa World Championship games, as well as postal and casual games are used to illustrate concepts such as swarming, blockade, hostage, frames and much more. Juhnke's lively and entertaining presentation makes learning Arimaa as well as learning about Arimaa fun even for those who are not acquainted with the game.

Covers beginning the game, right up to advanced strategies. Very clear and easy to follow. The game itself is easy to learn and surprisingly deep.