Sumito & Pushing Your Opponent in Abalone

Sumito & Pushing Your Opponent in Abalone
Discussing some basic tips for playing the game Abalone. Now we have been discussing what the word Sumito means; basically pushing your opponent's marbles, pushing your opponent. So let's talk a little bit more about Sumito and pushing your opponent's marbles once again. We were talking earlier about positions of superiority so we know from an earlier segments that you can either push 3 to 2 or 3 to 1 or 2 to 1 as well. Now keeping in mind when you are setting up your Sumito's and pushing your opponent's marbles, your opponent's marbles can only be pushed in line; they have to be in line. You can't be taking a piece moving it about or anything. They always have to be pushed in line when in contact and there also has to be a free space behind the marble. So what I mean by that is for instance if I had a black piece there and you see a 2 to a 1 push Sumito, I can't make that push because there is another piece, another black marble right here; there is no open space. I can only make that move now because there is an empty space so there is a 2 to 1 push and there we've made that push. The exception to that rule is of course when you are going to eject your players marbles from the board because right in here this is really set up to be an empty space. Like in here except this is the end of the board piece. So here we can take a 3 to a 2 push Sumito, push that off and we've objected one of our player's pieces. Here you got a 3 to 1 push as well. You can do that again. In here you always have to make sure that there is an empty space so here's a black 3 to 1, you pushed your piece there. Here we got a 2 to 1; you are pushing your piece here. White, you've got a 2 to 1. You can push your piece here. Here look at this, you've got a 3 to 2; they could push you right back. You can see how this game can go in any direction. You have to keep in mind you can go forwards, backwards, side to side. There is no rule in what direction you have to go. You just have to keep in mind that you are moving either 3, 2 or 1 marble at a time. So keep these in mind and player 2 is never obligated to push here. You don't necessarily because you've got 2 to 1, you don't necessarily have to push them. You could take 1 marble and move it out of the way. A player is never obligated to push all of these marbles. You can either once again choose 1, 2 or 3 marbles to push at a time.