Ruling — YINSH — RuleSage

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: YINSHbg-7854-en-1e

**Preparation and Setup**

1. Place the board vertically between the players so that the lines marked with letters run from one player to the other.[1]

2. Each player should have spaces for 3 rings on their side.[1]

3. Draw lots to determine who begins; the starting player plays "white" and takes the 5 white rings, while the other player takes the 5 black rings.[1]

4. Put the markers next to the board so both players can reach them (this is the "pool").[1]

5. Start with an empty board.[2]

6. Players take turns putting one ring on the board at a time on any intersection, including edges, until both players have placed 5 rings.[2]

**A Turn**

1. Each move starts by taking a marker from the pool.[2]

2. Choose one of your rings to move and put a marker of your color face up in that ring so it occupies the same space as the ring.[2]

3. Move the ring in a straight line to a vacant space.[2]

4. You may move the ring over one or more vacant spaces.[2]

5. You may jump over one or more markers of any color, provided they are lined up without interruption.[2]

6. If you jump over markers, you must place your ring in the first vacant space directly behind the markers you jumped over.[2]

7. A ring may move over vacant spaces and then continue with a jump over markers, but after jumping, it cannot move over any more vacant spaces.[2]

8. A ring cannot jump over other rings.[2]

9. If you move a ring over vacant spaces without jumping over any markers, your turn ends when the ring reaches its new spot.[3]

10. If you jump over one or more markers, you must flip all those markers (both your own and your opponent's) to the opposite color.[3]

11. Do not flip markers while moving the ring; move the ring first and then flip the markers.[3]

12. Do not flip the marker that was placed in the ring during that move, as it has not been jumped.[3]

13. Markers can only be flipped; they cannot be moved.[3]

**Forming a Row and Removing Rings**

1. Try to form a row of 5 adjacent markers in a straight line that show your color.[4]

2. If you form a row, you must take the 5 markers from the board and return them to the pool.[4]

3. After removing a row, you must remove one of your rings and place it on one of the 3 spaces on your side of the board to indicate you formed a row.[4]

4. If you form a row of more than 5 markers, you may choose which 5 markers to remove, provided they form an uninterrupted row.[4]

5. If you form two non-intersecting rows in one move, you must remove both and remove 2 rings.[4]

6. If you form two intersecting rows in one move, you may choose which row to take; the other row will no longer be complete.[4]

7. You may form a row for your opponent; in this case, the opponent must remove the row and a ring before making their move.[4]

8. If you form a row for yourself and a row for your opponent simultaneously, handle your own row as normal, then the opponent must remove their row and a ring.[4]

**Winning and Ending the Game**

1. The game ends as soon as a player has removed 3 rings from the board, meaning they have formed 3 rows of 5 markers.[1][5]

2. If you form both your own and your opponent's third row on the same move, you win because you may remove your third ring first.[5]

3. If all markers are placed on the board before a player wins, the player who removed the most rings wins; if both removed the same number, it is a draw.[5]

**Blitz Version**

1. The aim is simpler: be the first to line up 5 markers of your color to win.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.2 · Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION

[2] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.3 · C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING

[3] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.3 · F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S

[4] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.3 · G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING

[5] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.4 · G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!

[6] RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook · p.4 · J BLITZ VERSION

🔧 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 92 ms · ask 6077 ms · total 6170 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6170 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Y 1/ You begin with an empty board. I S 3/ Then you must move the ring in which you have put a marker according to the following rules: 2/ First, you must bring your rings into play. You and your opponent start putting them on the board, each in turn and one ring at a time. The intersections constit", "headingPath": "C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Y I S The sixth game of the GIPF project . For 2 players. Sometimes you'll have the impression that there is nothing but chaos on the board. You line up a few of your pieces - and the next thing you notice is that they have changed color! The more pieces on the board, the more difficult it becomes t", "headingPath": "Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "This is a short and very fast way of playing YINSH. You play exactly as described above, but the aim is simpler: now you must form only one row. So be the first to line up 5 markers of your color and you win! That's it! Easy, don't you think? Have fun!", "headingPath": "J BLITZ VERSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Y I SITUATION 1: Black may remove either of the two intersecting rows, but no matter which row he takes, the remaining row will not be complete any more. So this counts as only one row! SITUATION 2: the black row contains 7 markers. Black may choose which 5 markers he will remove, but he must choose", "headingPath": "G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "1/ By moving rings and flipping markers you must try to form a row of 5 markers that show your color. The 5 markers must be adjacent and in a straight line. Rings do not count. For the sake of clarity: hereafter, a row of 5 markers that show the same color will simply be referred to as ' a row ' . 2", "headingPath": "G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "1/ If you moved your ring over vacant spaces without jumping over any markers, your turn ends when you put the ring on its new spot. 2/ If you've jumped over one or more markers, you must flip all those markers . This applies to both your own and your opponent's markers. Thus, each white marker that", "headingPath": "F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Y I N S H I G P F I G P F N N O V D Z R T Z È Y I N S H T N Ü P C T Z A A R Kris Burm Warning! Choking hazard. Not suitable for children under age of 3 due to small parts. Author: Kris Burm 3D: Andreas Resch Design: Kris Burm, HUCH! & friends © 2016 Rio Grande Games © 2016 HUCH! & friends Distributo", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Manufacturer: Hutter Trade GmbH + Co KG Bgm.-Landmann-Platz 1-5, 89312 Günzburg, GERMANY Contents ..................................................3 Aim of the game .....................................3 Preparation .............................................3 Starting Position ..................", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "J BLITZ VERSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 345}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 345 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 345 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 0.90483 of 2816 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 09:11

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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING	p.3	0.048916 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION	p.2	0.048139 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	J BLITZ VERSION	p.4	0.047883 (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))	252
#4	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!	p.4	0.046642 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING	p.3	0.03125 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S	p.3	0.030303 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)		p.1	0.029851 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)		p.1	0.029412 (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 9 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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	J BLITZ VERSION	p.4	#3	0.047883 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION	p.2	#2	0.048139 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S	p.3	#6	0.030303 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)		p.1	#8	0.029412 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)		p.1	#7	0.029851 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING	p.3	#5	0.03125 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!	p.4	#4	0.046642 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING	p.3	#1	0.048916 (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 YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	Kris Burm · Can you find a bit of order amongst the chaos? · A CONTENTS · B A I M · C PREPARATION	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	C PREPARATION · D S T A R T I N G P O S I T I O N · E MOVING A RING	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	F F L I P P I N G M A R K E R S	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	G F O R M I N G A R O W / REMOVING A RING · Diagram 6: · H END OF THE GAME · I BE CAREFUL!	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK YINSH — Rulebook (corpus doc 345)	J BLITZ VERSION	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 92 ms · first delta 1752 ms · total 6170 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 92 ms · ask 6077 ms · gateway work 6170 ms · total 6170 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3317
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 899
tok/sec: 205.6 tok/sec — 899 output tokens in 4.373 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s ago)
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 273), 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.