渋 Sparks

A game for the Shibumi object by Dieter Stein.

Material

• Shibumi set: 4 × 4 square board, 8 white, 8 black, and 14 red balls

Setup

The board (a “fireplace”) starts filled with white and black balls in an alternating pattern. The red balls (called “sparks”) are kept ready to hand.

Sparks setup

Play

Two players, White and Black, are taking turns by putting a spark from the supply and a ball of their own colour from the board (the coal ball) into the hand.

Coal can only be taken if it isn’t pinned, i.e. it is free or it supports not more than one other ball on the level above.

If the coal ball was free, the player fills the emptied space with the spark and plays the coal on any other place.

If the coal ball was not free, a supported ball will just drop into place:

• If a spark dropped, the player returns the spark in the hand to the supply and plays only the coal ball on any place.
• If a white or black coal ball dropped, the player plays both balls in the hand on any place and in any desired order.

White takes spark x from the supply, removes coal a, puts x there and plays a.

The next player, Black, takes another spark y, removes coal b which makes coal a drop. Black has two balls now (b and y) and plays them.

End of the game

The player who places a ball of their own colour on top of the pyramid (the fire cone) wins the game.

A quick introduction to Sparks strategy

There are 14 moves. With each turn the pyramid normally grows by one ball. Only if a spark is dropped, the number of balls is not increased. No dropping sparks would be a win for Black. Yet there will be spark drops in every game and players sometimes can force or avoid them. So controlling the occurrence of spark drops is essential: White wins by an odd, Black by an even number of spark drops.