Vincent De Boer

Vincent de Boer is a computer science student at TU Delft who became the World Champion of Stratego thrice in a year. He feels that there are probably more differences than similarities between chess and stratego analytical thinking. He takes the challenge for Stratego game on thinking backwards, remembering as much as you can about the game history and then drawing conclusions from this.

De Boer played Stratego for the first time at age nine, but then abandoned the game very quickly soon after, only to start playing it again years later as an online game. In 1999 when he got an Internet connnection at home, he was eager to play online games and quickly got addicted to them. De Boer turned out to be a talented stratego player from the outset. Within a year of having started playing in real life tournaments, he became one of the top five players in the Netherlands, a country where the game is very popular.

According to De Boer, every stratego game is different, because part of the game is to do something your opponent doesn't expect, while trying to find out what it is your opponent is trying to make you believe. Tricking your opponent into making misjudgments is an important part of the game.."

Besides the ability to calculate tactical and strategic plans based on the received information, a good memory is fundamentally important in stratego. Losing a piece to an opponent's piece always reveals the rank of the opponent's stronger piece in return. De Boer: "If you forget that information, losing your piece is a complete waste; but if you remember it, then you're likely to profit from it later in the game."