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Topic: Theoretical advantage of Elephant blockade ? (Read 1127 times) |
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pago
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Theoretical advantage of Elephant blockade ?
« on: Oct 15th, 2010, 4:42am » |
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I have a question about Elephant blockade for the strong players.
There are a lot of convincing wins of Humans against bots thanks to the Elephant blockade tactics (for example 20032 Arimanator vs Clueless).
The issue is the following :
Human has to use 9 pieces to stuck the opponent elephant (plus the sacrifice of a dog in that game).
It means that Human immobilize 10 pieces over 16 to get his positional advantage of one mobile Elephant against no opponent.
When we look at the games we can see that the bots are very passive once the elephant has been blockaded. They stay waiting for the opponent reorganization (piece rotation) and they seem frightened by the Opponent Elephant.
My questions are the following :
Is an Elephant Blockade as huge as the results seem to demonstrate (in that case would you sacrifice a Horse or even the camel to get a blockade) ? Or are the results partially due to bots inefficiency to use their remaining majority of mobile pieces ?
Even if one think that the side with a mobile elephant has a long-term advantage, could we imagine that the blockaded side could have a short-term advantage during the opponent reorganization ? For example, he could try to play very actively (advancing pieces instead of staying passively behind his trap line) to get some threats while his opponent tries to free his strong pieces.
Last question : Have strong players tried playing each other in such situations to measure the real advantage of the elephant blockade and the best defence for the opponent ? (for example, they would begin the game 20032 at move 4b)
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omar
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Re: Theoretical advantage of Elephant blockade ?
« Reply #1 on: Oct 15th, 2010, 10:04am » |
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I don't think I've ever tried purposely allowing my elephant to be blockaded to see if I can get an advantage elsewhere on the board. I think if the blockade does not require the opposing elephant to hold it then it is probably not advantageous. In this postal game I accidentally go my elephant stuck, but was able to eventually wriggle it out.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=37845
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pago
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Arimaa player #5439
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Re: Theoretical advantage of Elephant blockade ?
« Reply #2 on: Oct 15th, 2010, 2:20pm » |
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Very interesting game Omar.
Did you create a double big reversal area on the site for this game ?
This game almost looks like the type of situation I was thinking when I posted this topic. In particulat Gold played actively.
However when the blockade arised, silver was already well developped so it is difficult to imagine that it could be a kind of balance between short term and long term.
When the blockade arises at the very beginning we might imagine that the blockading side has to lose a lot of tempo to rotate the piece before beeing able to free his strong pieces. During this short period the blockaded side could try to develop his pieces in an attempt reduce his disadvantage.
Of course I don't imagine that strong players would let purposely their elephant blockaded. However experimental games with early blockade could be interesting
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pago
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Arimaa player #5439
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Posts: 69
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Re: Theoretical advantage of Elephant blockade ?
« Reply #4 on: Oct 18th, 2010, 5:40am » |
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Quote:
The following game is much closer from the idea I try to develop in this thread :
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=156725
However silver elephant has never been totally blockaded. So I don’t consider that it is a good example of a potential balance between E blockade and dynamic factors.
This game has an additional interest due to the material unbalance (M vs hc).
Are you secretive Fritzlein ? Why have you hidden such an interesting game ?
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