Hex board game online
Hex is pure strategy with one simple rule: link your two sides of the board. Take on a Monte Carlo computer at three levels, or pass the device to a friend.
Your move — you’re Red, connect top to bottom
Tap a hexagon to place a stone. Red links the red edges (top and bottom), Blue the blue edges (left and right).
How to play Hex
The board is an 11×11 rhombus of hexagons. Red owns the top and bottom edges, Blue owns the left and right edges. Red moves first, and each turn you place one stone of your color on any empty hexagon.
Win by building an unbroken chain of your stones between your two edges. Stones never move or get captured, and a game of Hex can never end in a draw — when the board fills up, exactly one player has connected.
Because going first is a big edge, Hex uses the swap rule: after Red’s first stone, Blue may hit “Swap” to take that stone instead (it flips to blue on the mirrored cell) and Red moves again. So Red should open with a move that’s neither too strong nor too weak.
Frequently asked questions
Who invented the Hex board game?
Hex was invented by Danish mathematician and poet Piet Hein in 1942, and independently by John Nash in 1948 at Princeton. It was sold commercially as “Hex” in the 1950s and is still a favourite of mathematicians.
Is there a winning strategy in Hex?
Yes — John Nash proved that the first player always has a winning strategy, but nobody knows what it is on an 11×11 board. That proof is exactly why the swap rule exists. Practical tips: keep to the centre, use “bridges” (two stones with two shared empty neighbours) and block from a distance, not right next to the enemy stone.
How strong is the computer?
It uses Monte Carlo Tree Search with RAVE, playing out thousands of random games per second in the background. Easy is gentle, Medium gives most casual players a fight, and Hard thinks for a couple of seconds and punishes loose play.