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Topic: May Botbash: discussion thread (Read 3731 times) |
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IdahoEv
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Arimaa player #1753
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May Botbash: discussion thread
« on: May 1st, 2006, 7:40am » |
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May's botbash is (hopefully) to learn to forge an offense without using your elephant; saving the elephant only for defense.
In brief, you can't move your elephant further forward than the 4th rank, and you can't blockade the opposing elephant ... no bait-and-tackle this time; it's time to try something different.
Full rules at:
http://idahoev.com/arimaa/challenge_2006_05.html
You win points for each bot for which you hold the fastest win under these conditions. The winner is the player with the most points on June 1st. To encourage active competition, I am splitting the $15 prize: $10 to first place, $5 to second place.
Good luck!
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #1 on: May 1st, 2006, 8:49am » |
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The way these results are already coming fast and furious, I'd say you picked another winner of a contest. You may be too busy updating the results to have any time to play yourself!
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| « Last Edit: May 1st, 2006, 12:11pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #2 on: May 1st, 2006, 12:20pm » |
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You set us a cute little additional challenge by not specifying how the points per bot were generated from their respective ratings. It seems I can generate the same list of point values from the ratings of the bots by taking
(Rating/579.9)^4
and rounding to the nearest integer. It matches the points you gave row by row. But strangely, it doesn't match if I divide by 580. This sets another puzzle: Why 579.9?
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #3 on: May 1st, 2006, 2:44pm » |
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on May 1st, 2006, 12:20pm, Fritzlein wrote:You set us a cute little additional challenge by not specifying how the points per bot were generated from their respective ratings. It seems I can generate the same list of point values from the ratings of the bots by taking
(Rating/579.9)^4
and rounding to the nearest integer. It matches the points you gave row by row. But strangely, it doesn't match if I divide by 580. This sets another puzzle: Why 579.9? |
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Wow that was fast, yes it's a fourth power function; i played around a bit and this is what felt right. There's a different way to write the formula wherein the constant(s) will make instant and obvious sense.
Since you seem to enjoy the challenge, I'll let you find that on your own. 
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #4 on: May 1st, 2006, 3:14pm » |
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on May 1st, 2006, 8:49am, Fritzlein wrote:| You may be too busy updating the results to have any time to play yourself! |
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Yes, I think I'll need to write a module that handles the results automatically.
It depends how quickly I can get JDBC for MySQL working on my webhost; my last attempt to get JDBC/MySQL working on a Linux box did not go so well.
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Fritzlein
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #5 on: May 1st, 2006, 3:30pm » |
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on May 1st, 2006, 2:44pm, IdahoEv wrote:| Since you seem to enjoy the challenge, I'll let you find that on your own. |
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That was nice of you to leave me another puzzle instead of answering! Now I don't want to spill the beans in case anyone else wants to try. Let me just test whether I have the answer. If I had accurately converted from your notation to mine, I would have said
(Rating/579.7739)^4
Right?
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #6 on: May 1st, 2006, 4:00pm » |
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Yes, I think you've got it. I get 579.7739063.
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frostlad
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #7 on: May 1st, 2006, 9:50pm » |
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I'm starting to see that this is a very hard challenge if you can't entice the bot to let you frame something. If the bot is very defensive it is hard to launch an attack on one wing or the other without getting in trouble.
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Arimanator
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Arimaa player #1064
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #8 on: May 2nd, 2006, 2:03am » |
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I believe you have quite a few scores to update here. (I am not only talking about me)
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #9 on: May 2nd, 2006, 2:08am » |
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on May 2nd, 2006, 2:03am, Arimanator wrote:| I believe you have quite a few scores to update here. (I am not only talking about me) |
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Indeed I do. Which is why I am instead working on a program to do it for me, as there is absolutely no way I can keep up with you guys!
I hope to have it finished soon. Don't worry - your wins are not going unnoticed or unrecorded!
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #10 on: May 2nd, 2006, 3:44am » |
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I went ahead and did a manual update. You guys have done a lot of work!
I read the current standings as:
Arimanator: 1st place with 227 points
frostlad: 2nd place with 172 points
99of9: 3rd place with 29 points
IdahoEv: 4th place with 18 points
I notice a very strong trend towards the fast and/or blitz bots.
The automatic scoring tool is about half done.
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Arimanator
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Arimaa player #1064
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #11 on: May 2nd, 2006, 4:15am » |
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on May 2nd, 2006, 3:44am, IdahoEv wrote:I went ahead and did a manual update. You guys have done a lot of work!
I read the current standings as:
Arimanator: 1st place with 227 points
frostlad: 2nd place with 172 points
99of9: 3rd place with 29 points
IdahoEv: 4th place with 18 points
I notice a very strong trend towards the fast and/or blitz bots.
The automatic scoring tool is about half done. |
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You forgot my win against Gnobotblitz (84 points)
Which puts my total at 311
Actually there is a mix up of the scores here I won against : bot_GnoBot2005Blitz,bot_GnoBot2005Fast ,bot_Loc2005Blitz,bot_Arimaazon,bot_Loc2005Fast.
Which makes 84+69+54+53+46 = 306
I believe there may be some mistakes in Frostlad total as well. (I didn't check but it felt that way).
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| « Last Edit: May 2nd, 2006, 4:46am by Arimanator » |
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Arimanator
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #12 on: May 2nd, 2006, 6:49am » |
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on May 2nd, 2006, 6:26am, 99of9 wrote:
I don't think so. The E was never boxed in. It always had an escape at least by pushing up the horse. There is no way that one could refuse that game while keeping any of the others. Except the XXXscoreYYY ones that don't really count.
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jdb
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Arimaa player #214
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #13 on: May 2nd, 2006, 7:42am » |
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One way I use to see how boxed in an elephant is, is to count how many steps the elephant would need to occupy one of the four central squares. (Assuming the opponent just passes)
So a full blockade would be infinite, (well not quite, but a really big number)
For example, In 99of9's game on move 22w, I think that gold needs 11 steps (Is this correct?) to get the elephant back to the centre. Silver needs two steps.
Maybe defining a blockade in terms of steps to return to the centre would work?
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Arimanator
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #14 on: May 3rd, 2006, 4:09am » |
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Whoever wins against BombCC or Bombp2 will have earned my undying respect.
Bomb is so defensive that that tactic (keeping the elephant at home) is precisely the one it's been fine-tuned to defeat, not counting of course the bait and tackle for which it is the biggest sucker. 
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