Avalanche, the board game

Play the game

This game is taken from 'How nature works: the science of self-organized criticality' by Per Bak. (Hat tip to John Gribbin, author of 'Deep Simplicity')

The player randomly adds a counter to a square on a chessboard. When the number of counters in a square reaches four or more they are all removed and one counter is added to each of the four adjacent squares (if they exist).

It was also noted that long grain rice is best used for creating a pile on a table and then trickling more rice onto the pile until criticality is reached and an avalanche occurs.