Abstract strategy games

An abstract strategy game is a board, card or other game where gameplay is mostly without a theme and a player's decisions affect the outcome. Such games are combinatorial, i.e. perfect information, don't involve non-deterministic elements (shuffled cards or dice rolls). This page will mostly be about two-player zero-sum games.

Ratings

Under perfect information and the absence of luck, it makes perfect sense to quantify a player's strength or skill level with a rating system. We can assign a number to a given player, and based on two rated players, we can estimate the outcome either in a single game, or an entire match consisting of a series of games.