Author |
Topic: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules? (Read 3724 times) |
|
JYoder
Forum Newbie
Arimaa player #4421
Gender: 
Posts: 5
|
 |
What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« on: Aug 30th, 2009, 2:28pm » |
 Quote  Modify
|
Just came across this game yesterday and started playing bots today. I'm liking it, and even even ordered the game as I'd rather use it than a modified chess set with human opponents.
However, in playing the bots, a couple times I've made a poor step, but because I can do a "take back" on my last step online with a bot, I've done that. But I'm wondering in actual official play--mainly against a human--is that allowed?
Is it like chess, where if you take your hand off a piece, then it's considered committed? Or only when you take your hand off the piece that made the last step is your turn officially over, and you can undo any previous steps up until then?
Also, if you make invalid moves (or don't realize what you've done because you caused a piece to die but didn't catch it) is your opponent supposed to tell you right away, or only after you're completely done, at which point you lose the game?
For instance, say you move a horse onto a pit without support and then do your other steps. Does you opponent alert to the invalid move right away and you lose the horse? Or because your turn isn't over, do you get to redo all the steps from the start? Or do you lose outright because your entire move was invalid?
Or suppose you move a cat onto a pit with support so he's fine, but then move that support piece away without thinking about it and then make your other steps. Your opponent sees your cat should be removed, but obviously you didn't because you didn't remove it from the board. Do you redo the whole turn, or because you actually did nothing illegal, is he just dead? (But suppose you pulled a rabbit with that "dead" cat... on steps 3 and 4... what's the ruling then?)
Thanks in advance.
|
|
 IP Logged |
|
|
|
Fritzlein
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #706
Gender:
Posts: 5928
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #1 on: Aug 30th, 2009, 4:23pm » |
Quote Modify
|
These are great questions, Jeremy. We haven't had to deal with any of them yet, because 99% of the play has been on-line with the interface enforcing the legality of moves. If there are going to be face-to-face Arimaa tournaments (and there are) these issues will have to be dealt with.
At least one person who has tried face-to-face Arimaa suggests that the touch-move rule from chess will have to be implemented on a per-step basis. For example if you touch your elephant first, then your first step must be made with your elephant. After you release your elephant, it must make that step, even if you realize that you have just killed your own piece by abandoning it on a trap. Whatever you move and release stays where you put it.
If you think it is harsh to force each step to stand, try playing against someone who is thinking by moving the pieces around. It is quite annoying to have the position changing all the time, particularly when your opponent undoes his move incorrectly and starts thinking from an incorrect position.
Of course tournament games will be played with clocks, and both players will have to record all the moves so that the position can be restored if a dispute arises. Even with the safety net of recorded moves, though, the concentration of the players will demand a per-step touch-move rule. In fact, I'm going to anticipate that the Arimaa community will adopt this policy, and I will dub it the "touch-step" rule.
Illegal steps are a thornier problem. In casual, unclocked games it is fine to gently correct your opponent, but in tournament a penalty is not only appropriate but necessary to prevent intentionally distracting behavior. On the other hand, losing the game strikes me as a harsh penalty for what might be an innocent oversight.
My suggestion for dealing with illegal steps in a tournament is to add five minutes to the opponent's reserve time. That should more than compensate for broken concentration, so there would be no incentive to annoy one's opponent on purpose.
Now that I think about it, the concept of illegal steps and the touch-step rule still doesn't take care of an illegal move where each step was legal, but the move as a whole caused a third repetition or left the position unchanged. I would like to say that only the last step is illegal, and therefore the first three steps must stand as played. Unfortunately, the third step might have been the first half of a push, with the fourth half the completion of the push. In that case one couldn't let the first three steps stand as the move. Perhaps we could say that when an illegal move is played, the opponent gets a five-minute time bonus, the largest legal subset of that move stands per the touch-step rule, and the player making the illegal move has the option of completing the move with different final step(s).
The reason I don't ever want an entire illegal move to be undone is that I don't want players to make the first step or two of a move, realize they have blundered, and therefore transform their move into something illegal so that they get to take it all back.
So, some specific situations: If your first step is to put your horse in a trap with no support, it comes off the board and you have three steps remaining. Your opponent could point out your blunder immediately, but if you keep on moving your horse before he has time to object, he can point out that your first step was valid but your other steps were invalid, take a five minute time bonus, rewind to where your horse came off the board, and let you play your other three steps.
Suppose that you step your cat into a trap (legally) and then move away its only support, but don't move the cat again. If all four of your steps were legal, there is no time penalty, but your opponent may point out that your cat died in the middle of your turn, even if it regained support by the end of the turn, so it must be removed. Apart from removing your cat, your move stands as played. I suggest that if your opponent doesn't point out that the cat died before he makes his next step, the error by both players stands, and they continue from the position on the board with the live cat.
A third situation: say you grab your elephant and move it four steps forward, but before you release it you change your mind and retreat it to its original square. I would feel that none of the steps have to stand, but your first step must be with the elephant. Does that make sense? Or does touching it to each square along the way count somewhat like a release in chess?
Please help us think through these problems. Also, tournament experience will be necessary to determine which rules work best. We are going to start getting some experience on September 12 when Naveed launches the Murphy, TX Arimaa club. Naveed has always wanted to play face-to-face rather than on arimaa.com, so now he is going to make an opportunity for himself.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
Arimabuff
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2764
Gender:
Posts: 589
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #2 on: Aug 30th, 2009, 4:24pm » |
Quote Modify
|
Those are excellent questions that obviously only apply to "manual" play since when you play a move using a computer the program only knows about your move once you've hit the send key. I think that they could only be correctly answered by an official set of rules that would resolve any potential conflict between players. If I had to guess, what these rules would be I'd say that they should be as close to the rules for Chess as possible. Therefore if you touch a piece you must play it (at least one step), if you play an illegal move you must redo the entire move. If you kill accidentally one of your pieces and the move is legal then you can't take it back. I'd say it should be pretty much like that.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
JYoder
Forum Newbie
Arimaa player #4421
Gender:
Posts: 5
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #3 on: Aug 30th, 2009, 6:08pm » |
Quote Modify
|
>> If I had to guess, what these rules would be I'd say that they should be as close to the rules for Chess as possible.
I'm a newbie who's never played face-to-face, but for what it's worth, I think the opposite -- you should feel comfortable distancing Arimaa from the chess rules if you want to, assuming it makes sense. There's already enough comparison, so why conform to chess standards if you don't have to?
Personally, I've always hated the official chess rule that says if you touch a piece, then you have to move it. Yet I know why it's there -- in case you have some idiot trying to be distracting. Though if you did enforce that rule, then by extension, you'd need to use it for pushing as well. Meaning, if you touch an opponent's piece you can push, then you need to push it, even if you remove your hand. And maybe that's what you want... I don't know.
I just know I've always disliked that rule in chess. And if you think about it, in chess when that rule is enforced, you're locking a player into a handul of moves while locking him out of dozens of others. Yet in Arimaa, you've literally locked a player out of 1000's of moves, so I would question if the penalty is too stiff in Arimaa for simply touching a piece... yet I can see the counter-point as well, so it's hard to say. (Maybe create a compromise that you can get away with "touching but not moving a piece" three times in a game?)
But removing your hand after moving a piece is entirely different -- I think that's perfectly acceptable since the board position has changed and to "undo" a move at that point (or any point along several steps) creates the potential to ruin the board's integrity.
Yet even so, I come back to the steps vs. moves, and/or if they are illegal vs. legal.
I agree that if a piece was/is dead at some point in your turn and you never saw it, then it's dead. Case closed.
But continuing steps after making an illegal move (such as moving a dead piece without realizing it) is stickier...
>> If your first step is to put your horse in a trap with no support [...] if you keep on moving your horse before he has time to object, he can point out that your first step was valid but your other steps were invalid, take a five minute time bonus, rewind to where your horse came off the board, and let you play your other three steps.
To me, it doesn't seem the other player should have to mention it and give you the chance to do your following steps differently. Sure, it's nice, but in an official game, it's not his job to referee every step you make.
It seems to me that after your move is done and you've performed an illegal step, then your opponent can say so now. At that point, all steps should be undone back to, and including, the first illegal step. It's then simply considered your move as the board stands. (So in your example, the horse would simply be dead and the move would be considered a 1 step move.)
That may seem harsh -- especially if your first step was simply the illegal play of moving a frozen piece -- but it seems like the cleanest method... and hopefully one that would rarely, if ever, come up in tournament play.
However, concerning taking back entire moves before you've commited the move...
You could introduce the idea of a "mulligan" where each player gets the option to completely undo one single move during a game if they are still in the midst of making it (whether it had legal or illegal steps). It could also impose a time penalty.
Yes, it may seem a bit like "sloppy ball," but again, this is Armiaa, which has 1000's of options per turn, so by comparison, chess with it's 30-ish possible moves just isn't in the same ballpark. Therefore, Arimaa shouldn't feel tethered to the same boundaries.
Just my two cents.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
aaaa
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #958
Posts: 768
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #4 on: Aug 30th, 2009, 11:54pm » |
Quote Modify
|
It wouldn't surprise me if players for who it has become second nature to recognize a transition from one board configuration to another as being the result of a valid move, would start being expeditious in bringing them about in games against each other (especially fast ones), like directly moving a piece to its final destination without tapping the intermediate squares with it or removing a captured piece without touching the piece doing the capturing if it returns to its square of origin.
Any official rules governing over-the-board play should wait until there exists sufficient existing naturally arisen practice to codify.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
Arimabuff
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2764
Gender:
Posts: 589
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #5 on: Aug 31st, 2009, 6:44am » |
Quote Modify
|
on Aug 30th, 2009, 11:54pm, aaaa wrote:It wouldn't surprise me if players for who it has become second nature to recognize a transition from one board configuration to another as being the result of a valid move, would start being expeditious in bringing them about in games against each other (especially fast ones), like directly moving a piece to its final destination without tapping the intermediate squares with it or removing a captured piece without touching the piece doing the capturing if it returns to its square of origin.
Any official rules governing over-the-board play should wait until there exists sufficient existing naturally arisen practice to codify. |
|
In Chess, the rules governing blitz are a little less formal than the ones applied to slow Chess. When you watch one of these hyper rapid games you can see that they are constantly touching pieces and putting them back in place, sometimes barely fast enough to keep them from tipping over or other times a piece encroaches two squares and they have to slide it back in the middle of one. They usually do that without decorum and without asking permission to the other player. For this kind of game "short hand” Arimaa may be required just to make it possible but I believe that the slow Arimaa will be played with the intermediary steps if only to show that a piece has never been left alone on a trap or that you didn't shift a temporary frozen piece in the middle of a move.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
omar
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2
Gender:
Posts: 1003
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #6 on: Sep 10th, 2009, 11:18am » |
Quote Modify
|
Well now that the sets are out and there will be more OTB Arimaa games, this is the right time to start thinking about Match Rules relating to physical play. I will need to eventually add a section to the Match Rules page to provide guidelines for OTB games.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/learn/matchRules.html
For official OTB games the only thing that can be said for sure is that the game must be recorded and that a time control must be used.
We should see how things work in practice before we commit to formalizing the OTB Match Rules.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
The_Jeh
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #634
Gender:
Posts: 460
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #8 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 9:13am » |
Quote Modify
|
on Aug 31st, 2009, 6:44am, Arimabuff wrote:
For this kind of game "short hand” Arimaa may be required just to make it possible but I believe that the slow Arimaa will be played with the intermediary steps if only to show that a piece has never been left alone on a trap or that you didn't shift a temporary frozen piece in the middle of a move. |
|
I agree. I've always thought of moves in terms of all the steps played, maybe because the web clients all show all the steps. If all the steps aren't played individually, I think in closed positions players will get distracted trying to see how the opponent's move was legal. It's another reason why the time controls we use here are particularly appropriate for Arimaa. In chess, since only one piece is moved at a time, a move can be made quite hastily under time pressure. Since in Arimaa multiple steps need to be made, it is good that there is fresh time allocated to each move.
|
| « Last Edit: Mar 25th, 2011, 9:15am by The_Jeh » |
IP Logged |
|
|
|
omar
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2
Gender:
Posts: 1003
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #9 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 9:32am » |
Quote Modify
|
I'm glad you brought this up again. I'm planning on hosting an Arimaa meet during the 2011 BGG con. It would be great to organize an OTB tournament there as well. So this is a good time to start discussing this and documenting the OTB match rules (preferably in the Arimaa wiki).
Sounds like the 2011 BGG con will be in late November; the weekend before Thanks Giving.
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/606327/bgg-con-2011-dates
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
SpeedRazor
Forum Guru
Skepticism is the Immune System of Science
Gender:
Posts: 72
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #10 on: Mar 25th, 2011, 5:06pm » |
Quote Modify
|
on Aug 31st, 2009, 6:44am, Arimabuff wrote:
In Chess, the rules governing blitz are a little less formal than the ones applied to slow Chess. |
|
In the last few years, the International blitz chess rules have become more formalized. One change, is that it's no longer a five minute game, but 3 + 2 (3 minutes + 2 second increment). Another rule change is that touch-move now applies to blitz games. Here's an example where Magnus Carlsen loses a game to Alexandra Kostenuik because he touched the wrong piece
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeyXKTVYenA
What about a situation where a player makes 1-3 steps of his move, then realizes that he needs to think further before finishing his turn? If somebody walks up to view this game, how will he know that a player has already made 'part' of his turn already?
One possible solution is Arimaa proxy balls. Three metal balls inset in the board behind the pieces. If someone makes part of a move, then realizes that he must think further, then upon retracting his outstretched hand, he picks up 1, 2, or 3 balls to represent the steps that he has already made. As a penalty for his impetuosity, he needs to hold the ball(s) in his playing hand while thinking; then make his move with the same hand, hit the clock with the same hand (ala chess), then replace the balls into their respective holes
Note: this idea goes well with truncated spherical pieces. If the squares were 2" across, then some good diameters might be:
2.0" = Elephant
1.8" = Camel
1.6" = Horse
1.4" = Dog
1.2" = Cat
1.0" = Rabbit
0.8" = Proxy Balls
One elegant thing about these ratios, is that the Elephants would weigh exactly as much as the eight rabbits (2³). Sorry for the digression...
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
SpeedRazor
Forum Guru
Skepticism is the Immune System of Science
Gender:
Posts: 72
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #11 on: Mar 29th, 2011, 4:23pm » |
Quote Modify
|
Actually, something like the Small World die - (image) http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/570280/small-world - might be simpler. Three faces are blank: the normal state of affairs in Arimaa; the rest have 1,2, or 3 pips on them. (In dealing with the number of steps of a turn which have been played before finishing it - if you need extra time to think.)
I realize that when turning Arimaa from an perceived online game only, to where it's actually playable OTB - (where it becomes a Monster! or Sinks  ) - there needs to be a Codified set of Conventions for OTB play. My idea that there needs to be a way of noting that part of a turn has been played - (and that player is still thinking) - might actually be a solution without a problem. But I beg to differ! As an chess player, whom constantly starts seeing better moves almost as soon as I raise my hand to play the first move, thinks that the four steps - (or maybe two push/pull tandem steps) - in Arimaa my become an even Bigger Issue, and probably should be arbitrated/formalized beforehand.
Should there be another major thread started for this, say like: "[Ideas] for the Official OTB Arimaa Rules"?
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
megajester
Forum Guru
Istanbul, Turkey
Gender:
Posts: 710
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #12 on: Mar 30th, 2011, 9:40am » |
Quote Modify
|
I like the idea of proxy balls, I'm just thinking they might be a bit complicated. Why not just have three nondescript objects, and you pick up as many as the steps you have taken.
|
|
IP Logged |
|
|
|
UruramTururam
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2537
Gender:
Posts: 319
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #13 on: Mar 30th, 2011, 9:49am » |
Quote Modify
|
In my opinion during "serious" live games all intended steps should be performed in reasonable tempo without any thinking-in-between. In no blitz games not more than e.g. 5 seconds delay between steps should be allowed, and violating this rule should be considered unsportsmanlike conduct.
|
|
IP Logged |
Caffa et bucella per attactionem corporum venit ad stomachum meum.
BGG Arimaa badges - get your own one!
|
|
|
SpeedRazor
Forum Guru
Skepticism is the Immune System of Science
Gender:
Posts: 72
|
|
Re: What Are Official Move "Redo" Rules?
« Reply #14 on: Mar 30th, 2011, 10:43am » |
Quote Modify
|
Thnx for the feedback, MegaJester! Yeah, needlessly complicating the game was my main concern also.
on Mar 30th, 2011, 9:49am, UruramTururam wrote:| In my opinion during "serious" live games all intended steps should be performed in reasonable tempo without any thinking-in-between. In no blitz games not more than e.g. 5 seconds delay between steps should be allowed, and violating this rule should be considered unsportsmanlike conduct. |
|
Wow! This, the simplest of all ideas, seems the most sane and probably should become Canonical for all official over-the-board (OTB) games. Make ALL of your steps at one time, or lose it! I like it!
Kind of like Wilhelm Steinitz' (1st world chess champion) admonition: "When you see a good move: sit on your hands and look for a better one." Arimaa translation: don't even Think about moving until you know all four of your steps.
|
| « Last Edit: Mar 30th, 2011, 12:27pm by SpeedRazor » |
IP Logged |
|
|
|
|
Home
Help
Search
Members
Login
Register
Reply
Notify of replies
Send Topic
Print