Editing Abalone (board game) (section)

== Champions ==
Person-to-person competitions have been held by the [[Mind Sports Olympiad]] since 1997.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.boardability.com/result.php?id=abalone |title=Mind Sports Olympiad: Full results for abalone. |publisher=boardability.com |access-date=2010-06-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708075034/http://www.boardability.com/result.php?id=abalone |archive-date=2011-07-08 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* 1997: Marc Tastet
* 1998: Vojtěch Hrabal
* 1999: [[Gert Schnider]]
* 2000: Gert Schnider
* 2001: Thomas Fenner
* 2002: Jan Šťastna
* 2003: Stephane Nicolet
* 2004: Alex Borello
* 2005: David M. Pearce
* 2006: Jan Šťastna
* 2007: Vincent Frochot
* 2008: Jan Šťastna
* 2009: David M. Pearce
* 2010: Vincent Frochot
* 2011: Vincent Frochot
* 2012: David M. Pearce
* 2013: David M. Pearce
* 2014: Nicolas Fiorini
* 2015: Vincent Frochot
* 2016: Vincent Frochot
* 2017: Vincent Frochot
* 2018: Vincent Frochot
* 2019: Vincent Frochot

Gert Schnider and Thomas Fenner participated in the evaluation and adjustment of AbaPro. Marc Tastet was the 1992 World [[Reversi|Othello]] Champion, Stephane Nicolet is a two-time World Othello Championship finalist, and Jan Stastna is a strong Othello player.

In a [[Computer Olympiad#Abalone|computer-to-computer competition]] held in 2003 at the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) events in Graz, Austria,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/game.php?id=27 |title=International Computer Games Association Tournaments |access-date=2015-09-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140922012459/http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/game.php?id=27 |archive-date=2014-09-22 |url-status=dead }}</ref> the AbaPro program<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ist.tugraz.at/staff/aichholzer/research/rp/abalone/ |title=Oswin Aichholzer's homepage: Aba-Pro.}} Abalone playing program which won at the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) tournament in Graz 2003.</ref> defeated the Nacre program.

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. This has been used for top tournaments since then, including the AbaCup.