Abalone is a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Lévi in 1987.

The dynamics of the basic game may have one serious flaw: it seems that a good but conservative player can set up their marbles in a defensive wedge and ward off all attacks indefinitely.

Thus, from the starting position, it takes little skill and no imagination to avoid losing, and nothing in the rules prevents games from being interminable.

Because it is boring for games to be drawn out indefinitely, serious Abalone players tacitly agree to play aggressively.

Experiments are still underway to find an opening position which neither devolves to a draw nor gives too great an advantage to the first player.

For example, the variation called The Pillar (with a fixed marble in the centre of the board), which has been examined to some depth by Alex Borello and Nicolas Le Gal, uses a third color.

[citation needed] Forums of Abalone communities have found that, generally:[7] Person-to-person competitions have been held by the Mind Sports Olympiad since 1997.

In 1999, a number of top players from the Mind Sports Olympiad signed an agreement to use a different starting position (the Belgian daisy) to revitalize the game.

In the February–March 1990 edition of Games International (Issue 13), Mike Siggins called the components "of good quality", and the rules "extremely concise."