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        Arimaa >> Events >> Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
        
(Message started by: IdahoEv on Aug 16^th, 2007, 1:17pm)

Title: Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
Post by IdahoEv on Aug 16^th, 2007, 1:17pm

If any of you are in or near Southern California, I am running a live Arimaa tournament at the Strategicon gaming event "Gateway 2007". Sunday Sept. 2nd, 3:00pm.

I'll be making one or two custom handcrafted Arimaa sets to give away as prizes. (I assume this is allowable within the license, since it will be at my expense and I am not selling them? Omar please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Hopefully I will be teaching new players to play the game. If there are any experienced players there I will run separate tournaments for noobs and people who have played before. I might even give a little seminar on basic tactics and strategy to help get the noobs up to speed.

Title: Re: Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
Post by IdahoEv on Aug 16^th, 2007, 1:18pm

Link to the gateway 2007 schedule: http://www.strategicon.net/index.php?goto=events

Title: Re: Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 16^th, 2007, 4:34pm

Excellent, thanks for spreading the good word! I look forward to seeing images of your hand-crafted set, and also to your report about how Arimaa is received at Strategicon. It's been so long since I learned how to play, I forget what it was like to encounter the game for the first time. In any case, the initial experience will be very different learning to play over the board against a human rather than on-line versus a bot.

Title: Re: Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
Post by aaaa on Aug 16^th, 2007, 5:34pm

on 08/16/07 at 13:17:15, IdahoEv wrote:

I'll be making one or two custom handcrafted Arimaa sets to give away as prizes. (I assume this is allowable within the license, since it will be at my expense and I am not selling them? Omar please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Like we needed any more proof, the above should aptly demonstrate the downright evil let alone ridiculousness of software (i.e. math) patents.

Sorry for stirring up the hornet's nest, but I can no longer be quiet about this matter.

The same goes for Gothic Chess, but it's even worse there as the patent is used for commercial reasons, while it's nothing more than Capablanca's chess with a different starting setup. It has even lead to the perversity of a Fischer Random equivalent of Capablanca having to explicitly exclude it as a possibility.

Good thing this garbage is still invalid in Europe.

It wouldn't surprise me if being patented has actually hampered the popularity of Arimaa, especially in the programming field.

Title: Re: Strategicon event -- Arimaa evangelism
Post by IdahoEv on Aug 17^th, 2007, 11:51am

on 08/16/07 at 16:34:45, Fritzlein wrote:

Excellent, thanks for spreading the good word! I look forward to seeing images of your hand-crafted set, and also to your report about how Arimaa is received at Strategicon.

Will do on both counts. The prize sets will be glass pieces in a fabric bag that doubles as a fold-out board. I'll also upload pictures of my own personal set when I finish making it.

Quote:

It's been so long since I learned how to play, I forget what it was like to encounter the game for the first time. In any case, the initial experience will be very different learning to play over the board against a human rather than on-line versus a bot.

I've taught at least six people to play on physical boards, at this point. My experience is that it's very easy to teach the rules (8-10 minutes) and basic tactics can be covered in a similar amount of time.

The biggest obstacle to playing on a physical board is that the freeze rule is not obvious to new players. Where the computer implementation prevents a player from moving a frozen piece, new players frequently try to move frozen pieces on a physical board.