Austrian Solitaire
From Mancala World
| Austrian Solitaire |
| Inventors: Ethan Akin & Morton Davis, 1985 |
| Ranks: None |
| Sowing: Reverse |
| Region: USA |
Austrian Solitaire, a modern mancala game, was first described in 1985 by Ethan Akin and Morton Davis of the Department of Mathematics, The City College, New York (USA). Professor Akin is a Ph.D. graduate of Princeton University and Professor Davis received his Ph.D. at the University of California (Berkeley).
The game uses reverse sowing, and is closely related to Bulgarian Solitaire.
Contents |
[edit] Rules
Austrian solitaire is played by just one person.
In the game, a group of N cards is divided into several stacks. Each stack may not bigger than the fixed integer L. One special stack is called the "bank".
Each move consists of two steps:
- One card is removed from each ordinary stack and put in the bank.
- New stacks are formed from the bank, which have exactly the size L, until the size of the bank is < L (including the possibility of exhausting the bank).
The game continues until a unique cycle occurs.
[edit] Symbolic Meaning
The invention of the game was inpired by the so-called Austrian school of capital theory, hence its name.
Akin and Davis wrote:
- Think of the ordinary stacks as machines. Each machine has, when new, a life of exactly L years. The size of a stack is the number of productive years left for a particular machine. Each year it ages one year (and so one card is removed from the stack). For each machine on line the company deposits 1/L of its cost into the bank as a sinking fund. Then it buys as many new machines as it can afford, and the remaining funds are left in the bank until next year.
[edit] References
- Akin, E. & Davis, M.
- Bulgarian Solitaire. In: American Mathematical Monthly 1984 (2); 92: 237-250.
[edit] Copyright
© Wikimanqala.
By: Ralf Gering
Under the CC by-sa 2.5 license.
