Abalone (board game) and 5 pits on each edge. "Abalone" was published in 1990 and has sold more than 4.5 million units. The year it was published it received one of the first Mensa Select awards in New York, New York. It is currently sold in more than thirty countries. The board consists of 61 circular spaces arranged in a hexagon, five on a side. Each player has 14 marbles that rest in the spaces and are initially arranged as shown below, on the left image. The players take turns with the black marbles moving first. For each move, a player moves a
British and World Marbles Championship diameter of approximately 12mm (half an inch). Two teams of six players of any age, gender or skill level, take turns using the tip of the finger to aim and project the "tolley", a larger marble (commonly referred to as the "shooter" or "taw"), which is a glass or ceramic sphere of 18mm diameter (three-quarters of an inch), deploying top spin, back spin and side spin, to drive other marbles out of the ring. A player's knuckle must be touching the ground when shooting, known as "knuckling down". Moving the tolley closer to the target marbles, known as "cabbaging", is