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Topic: Hello from New England (Read 6003 times) |
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UMDRevan
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Arimaa player #8265
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Hello from New England
« on: Nov 24th, 2012, 11:22am » |
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Hey Everyone,
I just discovered Arimaa by chance just two days ago, and I'm already addicted. What a fun game!
I've played chess and studied the game a bit, but I was frustrated by the sheer amount of the game that is based on memorization of opening lines and everything that goes with that. It just didn't feel like there was room for real creativity anymore, I guess. I also like to play poker quite a bit, with my favorite games being pot-limit Omaha, Omaha hi-lo, and Texas hold'em.
Other than that, I have two degrees, I'm in my mid-twenties, and I'm just trying to get life going getting a teaching license, etc.
You all have fun playing, and I'll try playing human-vs-human games once I get a better grasp of the game.
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supersamu
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Arimaa player #7523
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #1 on: Nov 24th, 2012, 1:31pm » |
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Hello and welcome to the Arimaa Community!
I hope you stay a member and play a lot of games. Arimaa is a game that I really enjoy playing, partly because the best players only know this game for 8 years longer than I do and you can pretty soon become very good compared to others. If you can´t wait to play humans, you can play postal games. This is a relaxed time control where you have 60 days in reserve and one day extra per move. You can sign up for it under "Settings" -> "Auto Postal".
Another great thing about the Arimaa community is the relatively small number of members. You will see that we are all very nice to each other and are happy for each new member that is actively playing Arimaa. If you have any questions regarding Arimaa strategy, there is a big Forum with a lot of threads to look at and a lot to learn. If you want to read one of the two books written about Arimaa, you can download the PDF for free under http://arimaa.com/arimaa/store/Daligault/ !I have bought this book and will probably buy the other one as well. Finally, I always enjoyed watching commented game videos and I have learnt a lot by doing so.
I hope we see us in the gameroom and, if you want, we can play a game together.
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UMDRevan
Forum Junior Member
Arimaa player #8265
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #2 on: Nov 26th, 2012, 7:37pm » |
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Thanks for the welcome, I appreciate it.
I've gotten a couple of bot games under my belt now, and I honestly have to say that this is one of the most delightful games I've ever played. It seems so benign at first, but after a game or two you realize it's a vicious little knife fight where whoever pulls off the last creative surprise is the one who will walk away.
While these two games are almost certainly riddled with errors, I thought I'd point to them just for fun. They're against the same bot in about the 1400-1500 range. In the first game, I won with an elephant sacrifice to reach goal with nothing left but rabbits on the board. The second was a little bit cleaner (ie fewer bone-headed blunders) of a game, but ended with a race to reach goal first.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=250540
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=250555
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clyring
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Arimaa player #6218
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #3 on: Nov 26th, 2012, 10:29pm » |
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Welcome to the world of Arimaa, UMDRevan.
If Arimaa is like a knife fight, then as important as knowing how to outmaneuver your opponent is knowing how to avoid stabbing yourself, and of course you should not hesitate when given an opening or it might soon close...
Your games are indeed riddled with mistakes, but this is entirely understandable since you learned the game less than a week ago. For your benefit, here are a few of the basic tactical ideas that you missed in those two games that you would do well to learn and look for in every game you play:
Game 1:
-13s: Remember that your opponent's moves may carry more than one threat and to ignore the others after countering the first doesn't really help. You cannot save your camel if gold wants to take it, but you had another option available: Threaten the enemy camel so that if gold takes your camel, you can take silver's in return! Although gold can still take your camel and advance his horse to c5 so that you only get a horse in return, this is still a very big improvement over just being down a camel.
-18s: A very similar idea applies here, and it looks like you noticed this during the game and threatened silver's cat, but threatening silver's camel would have been more effective.
-23s: Allowing your f8 rabbit to be captured was unnecessary. Completely giving up control of one of your home traps is usually a recipe for disaster against an opponent better able to exploit it.
-25s: Gold can safely take the rabbit you have advanced to c4.
Game 2:
-10g: This simply blunders the horse on g3. This capture pattern is uncommon and tricky to spot, but nevertheless important to be aware of.
-13g, 14g: This is more of a strategical error than a tactical one, but something that you should start paying more attention to as you improve from your current level to beyond the point where most games are decided by blunders. On either of these two moves, you could have forced a camel trade. This is good for you in this position because your camel is stuck being harassed by the silver elephant around f6 unable to do much while silver's camel is active and free to do whatever it pleases. (Note that in the case of 14g, it might look like silver can capture the camel in two steps and sacrifice only the b4 horse instead of the camel if you move your elephant to d3, (similar to after my proposed 13s in the other game) but unlike in the last game, this does not work because after you capture the horse, silver will not be able to defend the capture threat on c3.
-14g: You blunder another piece to this capture pattern. Definitely one to study!
-You lose a few more pieces later in the game, but these look like they were done intentionally in an attempt to produce a last-hope all-in goal attack in the northwest, so I won't object to them. Just remember that the only reason your attack broke through was because your bot opponent forgot to defend against your threats while blindly pursuing its own attack so you don't have to regret doing something similar yourself in the future!
With a little more work, you will soon have the tactical foundations needed to start exploring the subtler realms of positional strategy, where things really start to get interesting IMO.
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Hippo
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Arimaa player #4450
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #4 on: Nov 27th, 2012, 2:15pm » |
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Welcome to the comunity.
To the first game, you had opportunity to "frame" the bot's camel. It usually is not strategically good (often you need more material than opponent to maintain it), but with defending elephant on b6 and your elephant and camel in the middle, you will have much better controll over the game and your position would be fantastic. Rotating your camel out ... replacing it by 3 small pieces (one is already on d7) will give you piece dominating the rest of the board. With opponent's elephant out of the center there would be no restrictions for your camel ...
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UMDRevan
Forum Junior Member
Arimaa player #8265
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #5 on: Nov 27th, 2012, 11:28pm » |
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Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to view and comment on the games. I had a chance to check your comments against the games, and they were quite helpful. There were a couple spots in those games where I saw some missed opportunities, and it was good to have the chance to see what caused some of the material blunders (I noticed that pattern I was having trouble seeing is actually one of the first addressed in the .pdf book linked earlier in this thread).
For this first week of playing, I've kind of just been getting a sense of the way the game is played and how it feels, as well as learning how I respond to different situations. I think, even after this short amount of time, I have a much better sense of how pieces move and interact, and I think with study, rather than the haphazard game-play I've enjoyed so far, I could become quite good.
It's weird, but it feels like Arimaa was designed for me to play. It just seems so natural. I didn't have that sensation with chess. When I played chess, it was fun, but I never felt like I was at home. This is different. It just makes so much sense, and the game is really exciting. Perhaps I'm being overly enthusiastic since I just found the game mere days ago, but want to be good at this game.
Clearly, the games I posted demonstrate an absence of tactical understanding with the rather extreme material blunders and the eventual (extremely lucky) all-in attempts. So based off of your comments, I think the very first thing I'm going to try to study is tactical maneuvering as it relates to trap squares, both defense and offense.
Any advice on how to best do that? I was thinking I'd start with an empty board, and then see what happens by placing one gold/silver piece each, then 2 vs 1, 2 vs 2, etc, and at each of those levels having the pieces start at different squares surrounding the trap square. That and read more of that book (I think I know what I want for Christmas...)
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supersamu
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #6 on: Nov 28th, 2012, 5:14am » |
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Trap control is a good thing to study, because trap control is what Arimaa is (almost) all about, because a material lead helps a big deal in winning a game. Soon you will notice that there are positional factors that are not negligible, but in every level of play, good trap control (tactics) are of high importance.
Personally, I think Trap control is one of the most difficult aspects of Arimaa, because you have to think very long-term to decide if you can control a trap with only the pieces a,b and c or if you need to move the piece d over there as well in order not to lose anything in the trap. Nevertheless, studying can only show you a little aspect of trap control.
Arimaa is essentially a wild game where you will often have to find a move in positions you never imagined to play. One effect I experienced while I was reading Chessandgo 's book and watching commented game videos was that I hesitated to play, because I was so afraid of losing with my new knowledge because I somehow thought that now that I have studied, I should be better than before. I think I didn't play for 2 weeks.
This all should not discourage you from studying, studying is an important part of getting better at a game. One thing you could do is to concentrate about the trap control aspects in your next few games or so. The more the game progresses, however the power of material threats diminishes, while the power of goal threats rises.
There is a site with some puzzles ( http://arimaa.com/arimaa/puzzles/list.cgi ) (some composed, most from real games). This site is good to practice tactics not only for beginners.
Last but not least: play a postal game! This is a serious commitment, but if you want to study positions,even only one postal game can give you a lot to think about.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 28th, 2012, 5:26am by supersamu » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #7 on: Nov 28th, 2012, 7:33am » |
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on Nov 27th, 2012, 11:28pm, UMDRevan wrote:| It's weird, but it feels like Arimaa was designed for me to play. It just seems so natural. I didn't have that sensation with chess. When I played chess, it was fun, but I never felt like I was at home. This is different. It just makes so much sense, and the game is really exciting. |
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Ditto. I earnestly tried to get good at chess, but it never happened. For me, Arimaa was way more intuitive from the start.
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UMDRevan
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Arimaa player #8265
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Re: Hello from New England
« Reply #8 on: Nov 28th, 2012, 10:49pm » |
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on Nov 28th, 2012, 5:14am, supersamu wrote:
Last but not least: play a postal game! This is a serious commitment, but if you want to study positions,even only one postal game can give you a lot to think about. |
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I'm taking that advice and have a postal game going on now. Correspondence play is quite interesting, there's so much more time to evaluate a position. The games against the bots fly past (edit: perhaps I should force myself to play slower...), so postal games definitely have a completely different feeling about them.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 28th, 2012, 10:50pm by UMDRevan » |
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