Ruling — GIPF — RuleSage

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: GIPFbg-527-en-1e

Setup

1. Players draw lots for their color, with White beginning.[1]

2. The board is placed between players so the dot marked 'E1' points at the player with White pieces.[1]

3. In the basic version, each player uses 15 pieces per player (the less experienced player may be given an advantage of 1, 2, or 3 pieces).[1]

4. Players start the game with 3 pieces each on the board, placed on the angular dots with alternating colors, and then moved to the first spot towards the center.[1]

5. Each player begins with 12 pieces in their reserve (pieces not yet in play).[1]

A Turn

Each turn, a player must add one piece to the game using two mandatory steps:[2][1]

1. Take a piece from the reserve and place it on any of the 24 dots.[1][3]

2. Move that piece onto a spot in the play area.[1][3] This can be done by:

* Pushing the piece from a dot to a free spot.[3]

* Pushing the piece from a dot to an occupied spot, which requires clearing the occupied spot by moving the existing piece (and any subsequent pieces in that line) one spot further in the same direction.[3]

Rules and Mechanics

* Movement: A piece can move only one spot at a time and cannot be pushed out of the play area onto the opposite far end dot.[3]

* Capturing/Taking Pieces: When 4 pieces of the same color are lined up, they must be taken from the board.[3] The player of that color returns their pieces to their reserve, while the opponent's pieces are captured and lost.[3] Any pieces that form a direct extension of that 4-piece row must also be removed.[3][4]

* Simultaneous Situations: If a move causes both players to take pieces, the player who caused the situation goes first.[4]

* Winning: The goal is to capture the opponent's pieces so they have no pieces left to bring into play.[1] The game ends when a player cannot bring a piece into play because they have no pieces left in their reserve; that player loses, and the other player wins.[2][4] A tie is not possible.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook · p.4 · A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N

[2] RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook · p.4 · Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y

[3] RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook · p.4 · Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES

[4] RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook · p.4 · F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 107 ms · ask 4452 ms · total 4564 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4564 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The board shows a pattern of lines. Each line is characterized by 2 black dots and a various number of intersections with other lines. These intersections are called spots . 1/ There are 24 dots at the edges of the pattern on the board. Dots are not part of the play area; they are used to position a", "headingPath": "A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "1/ A piece must always first be placed on a dot, regardless of the move that will be made. This is step 1. A piece is not in play as long as it is covering a dot, meaning that the turn is not yet completed. 2/ There are two possibilities for step 2: \u0007 A piece can be pushed from a dot to a free spot ", "headingPath": "Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "The standard game in itself is a complex and difficult game to master; it offers so many possibilities that not everyone will want even more possibilities. Therefore we advise players to look at this variant as an option, as an extra challenge; by no means is it meant as an obligatory GIPF-exercise.", "headingPath": "Tournament rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "1/ Don't misinterpret the aim of the game; the only way to win is by capturing the opponent's pieces, not by returning own pieces repeatedly from the board to the reserve! 2/ A tie is not possible. The first player to run out of pieces loses the game , even if the other player, too, would run out of", "headingPath": "Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "Tip: To make the pieces easier to pick up, use them with the furrow upwards (as you can see in this illustration). Let's begin with a comforting notion: GIPF is not hard to learn. The length of these rules is not meant to overwhelm you; it is the result of our attempt to be as complete as possible, ", "headingPath": "The first and central game of the GIPF project · CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "❹ GIPF is a separate game and should, at first, always be seen as such. In addition, it is also the name of a project of which the game GIPF is the center. This project consists of a series of games and a number of extra pieces that are all compatible with GIPF , which allows you to combine games an", "headingPath": "Tournament rules · Concept and possibilities · A CONCEPT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "1/ Since it is imperative to bring a piece into play each turn, a player must try to keep his reserve 'alive' . To do so, he can capture his own pieces: he may return pieces from the board to his reserve, provided that he manages to get at least 4 pieces of his color in a row. 2/ When 4 pieces of on", "headingPath": "F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "the play area, which often creates better possibilities for attacking his remaining pieces. 5/ Keep in mind that taking pieces from the board implies that a number of occupied spots will no longer be occupied. This often causes new (and dangerous) openings. 6/ Only at the ending stage of the game do", "headingPath": "G S T R A T E G Y · Remark: · Standard rules · A BEGIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1280}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1280 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1280 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89204 of 1621 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:36 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N	p.4	0.04866 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES	p.4	0.047183 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Tournament rules	p.5	0.047163 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y	p.4	0.047131 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	The first and central game of the GIPF project · CONTENTS	p.3	0.045536 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Tournament rules · Concept and possibilities · A CONCEPT	p.6	0.045037 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:	p.4	0.045009 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	G S T R A T E G Y · Remark: · Standard rules · A BEGIN	p.5	0.045002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 14 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y	p.4	#4	0.047131 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N	p.4	#1	0.04866 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Tournament rules	p.5	#3	0.047163 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	The first and central game of the GIPF project · CONTENTS	p.3	#5	0.045536 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Tournament rules · Concept and possibilities · A CONCEPT	p.6	#6	0.045037 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES	p.4	#2	0.047183 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:	p.4	#7	0.045009 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	G S T R A T E G Y · Remark: · Standard rules · A BEGIN	p.5	#8	0.045002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	A G A M E B O A R D · B S T A R T I N G T H E G A M E · C GOAL · D A T U R N	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Remarks: · G S T R A T E G Y	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	Particulars: · E TAKING PIECES	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK GIPF — Rulebook (corpus doc 1280)	F E N D O F T H E G A M E · Remark:	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 107 ms · first delta 1928 ms · total 4564 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 107 ms · ask 4452 ms · gateway work 4564 ms · total 4564 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4056
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 510
tok/sec: 200.9 tok/sec — 510 output tokens in 2.538 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 6s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1210), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.