Some personal thoughts about Trax

I would like to provide some personal reflections which summarize my way of looking at the game Trax.

I remember when David said to me playing Trax is like fighting a war. When I imagine the situations while I play, I often attribute personalities to the other players. I see myself as a fierce shark - hmmm! Sometimes I am only a small shark with a single shaking tooth!

I think of Donald as a magician - that suits him very well. When he makes a move I do not expect - and that occurs quite frequently - I have the impression that he is pulling a rabbit out of a hat. He seems to draw from such a vast repertoir of threats and based on such a broad knowledge of the strategies that I still keep seeing rabbits! Unfortunately, a shark does not have much to be able to fight against such a magician, who can make the shark disappear at any time.

As for David, he irresistibly makes me think of a child. He has the wide imagination, disarming simplicity and the spirit of adventure. He combines logic with poetry, which is rather rare. There too, a shark must rise early to avoid ending up in a red fish aquarium!

Knowledge and imagination are important aspects; a flexibility of spirit is significant too. Maybe I will revise my position and will think as a tight-rope walker rather than a shark.

When one plays, one may actually be helping the other player. The next move of the adversary may also contain something that can help us. To play on your own in one corner of the playing area is not the best strategy. It is necessary to be ready to integrate the new structures that appear with each new move. It is important to maintain a balance between having a single idea in your mind and having several possibilities scattered throughout the play. To decide to drop a line of attack which took much energy in setting up requires flexibility. One tends to cling to it, as if the goal of the game was to win using that attack and not to win quickly.

To finish, I propose to you a personal vision of the game. As you all know, in Trax one can win with either a line or a closed path. It is known that by defending one, it helps the other. This is at the same time complementary and opposite. These two diagrams make me think of the duality which exists within each one of us. The line makes me think of the male side and the loop, the female side. Complementary and opposite.

With the pleasure of playing with you.
(Thanks to Donald Bailey who translated this text.)