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(Message started by: deep_blue on May 3^rd, 2015, 7:10am)

Title: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 3^rd, 2015, 7:10am

I remember back after round 6 of the Challenge when it became clear that Sharp would win it that many people liked the idea of a Sharp vs. The Mob.
To Omar or Lightvector: Any chance one of you could set up that?
To the community: Anyone still interested? Just post here then. ;)
We have already 19 players: :)
deep_blue, chessandgo, supersamu, harvestsnow, browni3141, PerkofBR, half_integer, Hufflepup, Algorias, Samraku, Knedlik, clyring, arimaa_master, ikalyoncu, RonWeasley, SilverMitt, Skarn, CraggyCornmeal, phairland.
EDIT: Everyone interested please read this:
I need a mail address from every mob participant. This is necessary because everyone gets his own individual voting link via mail. Harren, mattj256 I don't have one of you yet.

EDIT2: From now on the players list here won't get updated anymore, look on wikipage http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Bot_Sharp_vs._The_Mob to see who's participating.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 3^rd, 2015, 7:12am

writes down his name
Deep_blue

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by chessandgo on May 3^rd, 2015, 8:38am

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by mattj256 on May 3^rd, 2015, 8:38am

I'm interested!

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Harren on May 3^rd, 2015, 10:56am

Me too!

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by supersamu on May 3^rd, 2015, 11:20am

I'll help defeat the bot as well.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on May 3^rd, 2015, 11:40am

Make that six.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on May 3^rd, 2015, 12:38pm

I would play.
I think we will easily get enough human participation at this rate :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by PerkofBR on May 3^rd, 2015, 1:03pm

Count me in :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by half_integer on May 3^rd, 2015, 1:20pm

One more, should be fun.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Hufflepup on May 4^th, 2015, 3:37am

I would be interested as well.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Algorias on May 4^th, 2015, 1:46pm

Count me in as well.

During the AC, I was quite impressed how often at least one person in chat came up with an excellent move, which everyone immediately recognized as being the best option. With different players tasked to think deeply about different strategic aspects of the game, I think we can achieve quite good human parallelism.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on May 4^th, 2015, 2:17pm

The only thing is that sharp may not me ready to be a challenge for the Mob. A strong human on sharp's team would be interesting, too :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by rbarreira on May 4^th, 2015, 3:37pm

on 05/04/15 at 14:17:21, browni3141 wrote:

The only thing is that sharp may not me ready to be a challenge for the Mob. A strong human on sharp's team would be interesting, too :)

It might depend a bit on how long sharp is allowed to think for. It would be interesting to see how well it would do while thinking for a week.

lightvector: If hardware availability is a problem I have spare Core 2 Duo (dual-core) PC that I can donate to the cause. Not ultra-powerful, but hey. The only thing I would ask from the community would be some donations to help with the electricity costs :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 4^th, 2015, 4:00pm

I'd love to participate. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on May 4^th, 2015, 8:00pm

This sounds fun to me too. :)

I would be a bit concerned though about it losing the game right out of the opening though. With a week of people analyzing, I doubt sharp has any particular edge in tactics any more, while its strategic knowledge, particularly early-game, remains a weakness.

We could try it anyways though. Thoughts?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 4^th, 2015, 8:49pm

Also, us humans have the advantage of being able to discern who we should listen too and who doesn't know what they're talking about. I fall in the latter category, just to clarify. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 4^th, 2015, 8:50pm

I believe it's to, not too. Dost thou wish to opine?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 5^th, 2015, 4:49am

Browni of course has a point that the bot may not be ready to face the whole community. I wondered if we should have the Mob only consist of us "normal players" while the Challenge defenders aren't allowed. That might be fairer but the defenders might be disappointed that they may not participate.
I thought of a standard 1d/60d etc. game so that it would be finished till the next eventual Challenge (where the humans would try to strike back then ;)).
Something I thought was obvious but Browni in the chat mentioned it was not, is that my intent was not to allow bots in the Mob. I thought we (humanity) want to strike back vs. the AI so of course we don't have bots in our team.

Any opinions on that all?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by mattj256 on May 5^th, 2015, 9:00am

on 05/04/15 at 15:37:26, rbarreira wrote:

If hardware availability is a problem I have spare Core 2 Duo (dual-core) PC that I can donate to the cause. Not ultra-powerful, but hey. The only thing I would ask from the community would be some donations to help with the electricity costs :)

It might be more cost-effective to run the server in the cloud. I use Amazon Web Services at work and I can help set that up if it would be useful. (The OS options include Windows and Linux.) It's like $10/month for a very low-end computer, and $167/month for c4.xlarge which is what we use for our production web servers.

Prices are here:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

The prices are per hour, so multiply by 24 * 30 to get a monthly rate.
Prices are per hour, so you can shut the computer down when you're not using it to save money. Alternatively, if you leave it running 24/7 you can use a different pricing plan where you pay more up front but the total cost is reduced by 20% or more.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by mattj256 on May 5^th, 2015, 9:01am

on 05/05/15 at 04:49:31, deep_blue wrote:

I thought we (humanity) want to strike back vs. the AI so of course we don't have bots in our team.

We could have a human team vs a bot team. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 5^th, 2015, 9:15am

The problem is that then someone would need to coordinate the bot team.
Also Sharp is probably too much ahead to other bots.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by mattj256 on May 5^th, 2015, 3:51pm

on 05/05/15 at 09:15:15, deep_blue wrote:

The problem is that then someone would need to coordinate the bot team. Also Sharp is probably too much ahead to other bots.

Ok nevermind then.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on May 8^th, 2015, 12:32am

on 05/05/15 at 04:49:31, deep_blue wrote:

I wondered if we should have the Mob only consist of us "normal players" while the Challenge defenders aren't allowed.

I don't really get why you want to ban the defenders. All those who played this instance of sharp have lost at least once to it. There's nothing magical in having suffered it in an official challenge game. Or maybe you should also ban yourself, since you're one of the few who actually won once?
I'd rather have a stronger sharp than a weaker mob. A cyborg would be nice, but it requires a huge long-term commitment from one person.

Quote:

I thought of a standard 1d/60d etc. game so that it would be finished till the next eventual Challenge

That doesn't seem remotely possible. Even individual players time out at this speed. We need enough time for everyone to propose their favorite moves, argue about it, define a list of choices and finally vote. Even if we decided that one player (the king) has the final word on every move to speed things up, one day (or even two, planning on a 60 move game) would not be enough for an effective counseling.

I don't see a problem in the game lasting more than a year, as long as it stays interesting. Sharp keeping up with the mob at postal speed would be even more impressive than its challenge performance, and we're bound to get a great arimaa lesson. On the other hand, we should define conditions to end the game if it stops being interesting. The choice to resign could be added to the vote on the human side; if the bot's position is hopeless, an eval of -5000 (minus five initial rabbits) could be enough to decide that it lost. Maybe the decision should be validated by the mob (option "win now" in the vote). There's no point renting the server if the game is already decided.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by CraggyCornmeal on May 8^th, 2015, 1:04am

I'd love to be involved in the Mob, too, though I doubt I'll be any help. :P

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 8^th, 2015, 6:26am

on 05/08/15 at 01:04:21, CraggyCornmeal wrote:

I'd love to be involved in the Mob, too, though I doubt I'll be any help. :P

Join for the same reason I did; to have fun and or learn. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on May 8^th, 2015, 7:10pm

If there is interest, I would enjoy playing cyborg style on sharp's side. Access to good hardware would still be nice, though. I wouldn't want to run sharp on my computer. I also wouldn't want to personally pay server rental costs.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by CraggyCornmeal on May 8^th, 2015, 11:37pm

How much does Sharp's performance suffer if it runs on not-top-of-the-line hardware? Would it play measurably worse, or would it simply need a few extra minutes to find the best move? I'm asking this in case we can save a bit on server costs.

on 05/08/15 at 06:26:19, Samraku wrote:

Join for the same reason I did; to have fun and or learn. :)

I completely agree. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 9^th, 2015, 3:03am

I have no experience with one vs. many matches but if harvestsnow says the time is too short he's probably right.
And yes, sharp would suffer on slower hardware. I don't know how good sharp's parallelisation is but 12 cores vs. 1 core should be around 10 times faster for 12 cores. So you'd need 10 times as much time to find the same move.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on May 9^th, 2015, 9:05pm

If people are serious about wanting to run this, I will just rent a server from Amazon. The cost is reasonable, particularly if sharp doesn't think for a full week. For example, running on two cores thinking for 1 day / move costs about $200 for 80 moves which isn't crazy spread out over the course of a year or two. And two cores for 1 day / move is still more than 100 times more computation than CC.

My concern remains the same - I think there's a non-negligible chance that sharp will do something brain-dead in the opening or in some later position (ex: taking a bad frame and holding it for the next 20 moves while shuffling pieces), and it would be a shame to have this degree of investment in a game only for something like that to happen. Having one decent human player to assist in a cyborg fashion would likely help enormously if one could figure out a good interface.

I'm curious how much browni thinks that having access to sharp will help him at these speeds.

As an alternative I'm also open to simply making sharp available for a few postal games (thinking 1-2 hours/move). Sharp did not register in the postal mixer, but we could nonetheless set up a few games.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by PerkofBR on May 10^th, 2015, 12:01am

I think the browni - sharp duo would be to much for us to beat :P
Usually the one vs mob is a tough fight between the top human and the rest of the world. That human empowered by the best bot, the one that won the challenge, would be nearly impossible to beat in my opinion.
But what are your thoughts about you cyborging with sharp, lightvector?
You are a pretty strong arimaa player, and you are the one that understand sharp the most.
Maybe not a full cyborg play, if you dont have the time or willingness* needed, but just interventions when you see it get in a braindead situation like you said in your post.

*:I dont know if it is the correct word, just didnt knew anyone better :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 10^th, 2015, 7:08am

I think we could beat that cyborg but only if people like Fritzlein or Chessandgo would participate and invest not too few time.
I think Browni could just think strategically and let sharp check the tactics and such things.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by supersamu on May 10^th, 2015, 10:30am

I think we would be the favourite against sharp-browni.
I agree that there is reason to worry that sharp might not put up a good fight if a position arises where sharp plays poorly.
To prevent that, sharp does not need assistance from a player of browni's strength, however.
The cyborg player would need a good interface to meaningfully interact with the bot.
Since browni would like to play on sharp's side, I support browni being the cyborg player.
If browni can prevent sharp from playing piece-shuffling moves and other oddities, I think sharp's strength would increase quite a lot in certain situations. In cases where sharp is naturally strong, browni's assistance won't help as much, but will still be significant. The question will be if we would still be playing against sharp or if browni will influence the decisions too much.
I even imagine that browni might objectively weaken a bot move because he overlooks a tactic.
I would suggest that browni should not interfere in a purely tactical position, but the problem is how to judge that.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 10^th, 2015, 2:10pm

Well, thats his problem. :P
He might enter a move. A good non-shuffling move shouldn't lose much eval, a blunder will. Then let's get this starting. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on May 10^th, 2015, 3:24pm

As a cyborg I should be able to achieve greater play than the best suggestion of either me or sharp on each move. Playing as a cyborg is about a lot more than simply overriding the bot when you don't like its move.

I'm assuming I would be able to check any lines I wanted with sharp before sending a move, so a tactical blunder shouldn't happen unless it is beyond sharp's search depth to know and I don't catch it myself. Both are going to be rare occurrences.

In quiet strategic positions it's likely I would end up playing most of the moves without a lot of input from sharp, although I can still use sharp to suggest refutations to my riskier moves, suggest moves I might not otherwise think of quickly, etc.

In tactical positions brownisharp should also be stronger than either of us individually, since our primary skill sets are different. The ability of a human to direct a bot's search is very meaningful, allowing greater depths to be reached in promising lines the bot might not want to try on its own.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by supersamu on May 11^th, 2015, 2:08am

That is true, but I was thinking that people wanted to play against sharp+strategical support, not browni + tactical support. A better version of sharp and not a better version of browni, in other words.
So you would only interfere when sharp is stuck in an awful position or clearly plays in a bad direction.
But that is only my take on things, I am happy to hear opinions of others.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 11^th, 2015, 7:58am

I agree with supersamu. The idea (at least my idea) was to test if humans can still beat the bot. Then it would be cheating so to say if browni would play us just with tactical support.
EDIT: I also agree with the next post by chessandgo that it would make sense if lightvector was the cyborg player. Also I think that he should be allowed to use newer sharps which then wouldn't be a problem anyway.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by chessandgo on May 11^th, 2015, 12:56pm

I'm intrigued by the idea to play versus browni+sharp, but like others I think it would be like playing against browni a lot more than playing against sharp. If the idea is to take on sharp, I suggest we let lightvector do the cyborging if he wants to. Bot+developer makes sense as a team in a way anyone else would not.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by chessandgo on May 11^th, 2015, 12:58pm

something else to consider before we start the game: If lightvector releases another (stronger) version of sharp before the Mob game is over, do we want him to switch versions, or do we play Sharp_2015CC all the way?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on May 11^th, 2015, 4:42pm

on 05/11/15 at 02:08:39, supersamu wrote:

My point was supposed to be, partially, that I don't think it would be a better version of either of us, but more like a completely new player.

Responding to chessandgo, I think newer versions of sharp should be allowed to play. Humans get to improve, bots should be able to if they want to :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on May 29^th, 2015, 10:51pm

If people were mostly waiting for me to offer to be the human player teaming up with sharp, I apologize for letting this thread drop. I think this still sounds fun.

If there is still interest, I am willing to be the human player teaming up with my bot. I have a fairly full plate with other projects and activities I have going on, but I could squeeze this in :). If there are enough other people who still would like to participate, how about we get started in perhaps the next couple of weeks? Who would be willing to act as Mob coordinator and leading and organizing things on the Mob side? (perhaps beginning by gathering enough people together).

Also, if indeed I'm the one teaming up with my bot, I do not promise to necessarily put in a large amount of time myself - for much of the time it might just be sharp alone playing, with me acting only as a bare sanity-check. Nonetheless, I would still reserve the right to exercise control over my bot's moves and to modify my bot in any way that I wished during the game. And also to make use of any other resources, except for asking any other humans for help on anything specific and relevant to the current game or viewing the Mob discussion about the game. (Although if at some point I rented a supercomputer or did anything else that might have a large effect on things, I would disclose this).

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on May 30^th, 2015, 3:13am

Great! I think we can start this then. :)
I don't know if I am the right kind of person for this but I can imagine being Mob coordinator. Do you from previous Mob games know what exactly I have to do for this (like, calling people together, building the analysis tree...) and how much work it is?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 30^th, 2015, 6:59am

on 05/29/15 at 22:51:05, lightvector wrote:

Sounds like fun to me. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on May 31^st, 2015, 7:44pm

I don't know everything that being mob coordinator involves, but from what I recall, I think it involved being the one to set up the thread for people to discuss each week, to decide each week when and how to run the vote by which members selected a move, and to make the move once decided. And although not an explicit duty, I might imagine it involved being generally somewhat active throughout to keep it alive.

Is it possible or worth opening an informal signup of some sort, or even to add an announcement in the gameroom, to see if there's enough interest?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 31^st, 2015, 8:13pm

It sounds as if it doesn't actually require skill at Arimaa, but I'm afraid my track record on keeping up with online games would advise against I disagree uming such a responsibility. :(

on 05/31/15 at 19:44:04, lightvector wrote:

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on May 31^st, 2015, 8:14pm

on 05/31/15 at 20:13:36, Samraku wrote:

It sounds as if it doesn't actually require skill at Arimaa, but I'm afraid my track record on keeping up with online games would advise against I disagree uming such a responsibility. :(

huh, the part that shows up as "I disagree" should read "my as". I'm not sure what's up.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 1^st, 2015, 2:39am

I think since I am online every day normally I can do that. But Omar or so would need to open a new forum section like those for the old matches of this kind. From reading earlier this discussion there seems to be enough interest and I hope more people will join once the event got running.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by novacat on Jun 1^st, 2015, 8:29am

The mob vs the gang used pbworks as the discussion forum for the two teams. IIRC, in pbworks the tree for possible move options could be kept up by any member posting to it, but the coordinator may need to make sure it is up to date with all move options discussed.

Here is the forum discussion on the mob vs gang for reference.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1307542193;start=0

I don't know if pbworks is the best choice, I'm just throwing out another option as I liked the way the tree worked.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 2^nd, 2015, 6:39pm

I don't see anything wrong with just discussing in the forum. It shouldn't be a big problem to build a tree manually and I doubt that lightvector would be cheating by looking lines up.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on Jun 6^th, 2015, 10:23am

Any updates on this?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on Jun 11^th, 2015, 5:00pm

Let's try to not let this thread die.

I'm skimming the thread where the 2007 formula was discussed:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=2007onevsmob;action=print;num=1176003105

It worked pretty well and was readopted in 2009. The coordinator was given some freedom in deciding when to start the vote. This is a reasonnable idea. We don't have to follow a strict one-week schedule. Easy moves can be played quickly if there is unanimity while complicated moves should be considered longer.
Now, the coordinator would be in a tough spot if several days pass without significant contributions. The participants should probably adhere to some kind of discipline, and submit a brain dump as soon as possible instead of waiting to refine their contributions.
Also, we've come to rely more and more on the chat during the recent years. In this case, we should try to keep most of the discussions in the forum to make them easier to review. Any relevant ideas developped in the chat should be reformulated in a forum post.

The Mob used the Schulze method, as implemented on this page: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/civs/ .
It seems to be pretty much everything we need technically. The CIVS page emails the ballots with an indvidual key to each participant. Perhaps a separate mailing list could be useful for organisational stuff that wouldn't belong on the forum?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 14^th, 2015, 4:36am

So I suggest that everybody who wants to participate in the Mob sends me a mail-address (as PM or so) so that they can participate in the voting.
Like harvestsnow said it's really important then that you DO participate in discussions and so on, a Mob can only work when all members help in some way.

EDIT: As it seems to not have been clear: I need an address with which I can reach you. That voting system will send everybody who is participating an individual voting link via mail.
EDIT2: So far I got ~~3 5~~ 6 8 mail addresses. I think we can start when we got together 10 people.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by clyring on Jun 17^th, 2015, 10:11am

I publicly suggest the first real move to be lightvector's choice of color.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Samraku on Jun 17^th, 2015, 10:33am

on 06/17/15 at 10:11:06, clyring wrote:

I publicly suggest the first real move to be lightvector's choice of color.

Sounds like a fine plan to me. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 17^th, 2015, 11:02am

on 06/17/15 at 10:11:06, clyring wrote:

I publicly suggest the first real move to be lightvector's choice of color.

I would agree to this as well.
Can someone try to contact Omar so that we can get an own forum section like the Mob games before?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 17^th, 2015, 1:28pm

I got already 9 mail-addresses. One more and I want to start the game. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on Jun 17^th, 2015, 2:49pm

A few technical questions about the vote:
-The option to have a detailed ballot report is desirable [edit: actually all of the relevant information is available without it, so I have no strong opinion on this]. There is a sub-option to make the vote completely transparent (no anonymity, emails are public). I personally wouldn't mind, since I will use a dedicated address for this, but others probably would. If we go for the anonymous option, would it be possible to keep track of the list of registered voters each week, by posting the original list and any subsequent arrival or departure?

-There is an option to allow the voters to register their own entries. Do we want that? The vote could be started immediately. Voting would be disabled as long as new entries can be sent. The supervisor would just need to decide when to end that period and enable the vote. There are some downsides. The list could be too long or too short, and I don't think the submissions can be corrected.

-I don't know what would be the impact of the "no opinion" option. Does someone know?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by arimaa_master on Jun 18^th, 2015, 5:37am

on 06/17/15 at 10:11:06, clyring wrote:

I publicly suggest the first real move to be lightvector's choice of color.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 18^th, 2015, 5:56am

on 06/17/15 at 14:49:01, harvestsnow wrote:

A few technical questions about the vote:
*The option to have a detailed ballot report is desirable. There is a sub-option to make the vote completely transparent (no anonymity, emails are public). I personally wouldn't mind, since I will use a dedicated address for this, but others probably would. If we go for the anonymous option, would it be possible to keep track of the list of registered voters each week, by posting the original list and any subsequent arrival or departure?

The simplest thing there would be that I write down who is allowed to vote in the current move thread.

Quote:

*There is an option to allow the voters to register their own entries. Do we want that? The vote could be started immediately. Voting would be disabled as long as new entries can be sent. The supervisor would just need to decide when to end that period and enable the vote. There are some downsides. The list could be too long or too short, and I don't think the submissions can be corrected.

I don't think thats necessary. In the forum thread I will list all options I will include in the vote so far, so people can just tell they want another move in. Then when I start the vote I have a list of moves with which all are okay.

Quote:

*I don't know what would be the impact of the "no opinion" option. Does someone know?

I don't know either but we could just test on a test poll. (Note: Not the bot poll. That's a serious poll.)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on Jun 18^th, 2015, 1:41pm

One more thing about ties. How do will we break them?
I think the voting options are presented in random order by default. So we could just pick the first of the list. However, I don't see a way for the voters to check that the order was actually random.

The detailed ballot report shows the votes in random order. If two choices are tied, we could use the first vote expressing a preference as a tie-breaker. I think a three-way tie is unlikely.

Another source of random is the id parameter in the URL of the report (beginning with 'E_'). Take a sha1 hash of it, and pick the choice whose rank in the list is the numeric value of the hash, modulo the length of the list. This doesn't even require the detailed report.

~~This is unrelated, but I raised an eyebrow when I saw that~~ I'm an idiot, nevermind.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by browni3141 on Jun 18^th, 2015, 7:55pm

I would prefer no random decisions. In the case of a tie I would much prefer that deep simply choose between the tied options using his own judgement and information attained from discussion.
Also, I think deep should reserve the right to not use the voted upon move if there is something blatantly wrong with it, although I don't expect this to happen if Mob members are all participating in the discussion.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by ikalyoncu on Jun 18^th, 2015, 8:37pm

I would like to participate as well, if I am not too late already.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 19^th, 2015, 4:06am

on 06/18/15 at 20:37:07, ikalyoncu wrote:

I would like to participate as well, if I am not too late already.

You're in. :)
Also to all others, you always can join, even when the match already started.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 19^th, 2015, 4:22am

So we have more than a dozen players now. Generally we can start now once we have the "infrastructure".

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by Skarn on Jun 19^th, 2015, 9:07am

I'm in.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by half_integer on Jun 20^th, 2015, 5:58pm

Harvestsnow's post prompts discussion of another related voting topic: In a vote where there are more than two choices, it may be the case that no choice receives a majority of the votes (a tie is a special case of this). I suggest that we should not merely take the move with the highest number of votes, but ensure that each move made has the approval of the majority of voters.

The simplest way to do this is, whenever there is a tie or lack of a majority, the two most popular options are kept and a poll between them alone is taken.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on Jun 20^th, 2015, 6:15pm

I've contacted Omar about setting up a forum page for the mob, but unfortunately I haven't heard back from him about it (or about anything else) for quite a while. Maybe something like the wiki would be a reasonable substitute if Omar doesn't respond about the forum page?

on 06/11/15 at 17:00:12, harvestsnow wrote:

Also, we've come to rely more and more on the chat during the recent years. In this case, we should try to keep most of the discussions in the forum to make them easier to review. Any relevant ideas developped in the chat should be reformulated in a forum post.

Looking back over the thread, I just wanted to point one thing out - while I won't look at any page dedicated to mob strategizing, I'm not going to be refraining from viewing the chatroom, so don't write anything there that you aren't okay with me (as the assistant to bot_sharp) seeing...

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 20^th, 2015, 9:52pm

Before we start: Should we use the standard mob game time control? I was surprised that it has capped reserve and would like to change that. What do you guys out there think about this?

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by arimaaisagame on Jun 21^st, 2015, 8:26pm

I know you guys already started in the forum, but I've used this website to instantly create hidden forums.

http://www.quicktopic.com/

One person would need to register an account, then he can share created link with everyone, and everyone with the link can post.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 22^nd, 2015, 3:23am

I don't think this is necessary. I am sure lightvector won't cheat. On the other hand other players who don't participate might want to still watch the game and see what's going on there.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by clyring on Jun 25^th, 2015, 3:13am

I would like a fairly quick decision on this time control question so that we can get started already.

The only real discussion beyond the 7 days per move and the existence of reserve to dip into I've found is here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1307542193;start=143#143), which does make a reasonable point. Previously I clearly supported a time control with no reserve cap, but in the interest of keeping the momentum going, I think my clearest preference is to just get the game started already with any reasonable time control.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 25^th, 2015, 4:41am

I hoped that if we waited we would get a forum board from Omar but appearantly that's not realistic. So I agree that we start now as soon as possible. How about a vote with the following options:
1. like old mob games: 7d/20d capped reserve
2. similar: 7d/20d uncapped reserve
3. more time per move
4. less time per move (I don't think that's realistic though)
5. more reserve at start
6. less reserve at start

In case 3-6 win we would need another discussion/vote I guess.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 28^th, 2015, 5:49am

Here the results of that poll:
1. Same time control as in old Mob games. Capped reserve.
2. Similar to old Mob games but with uncapped reserve.
3. Less than 21 days starting reserve.
4. More than 7 days per move.
5. More than 21 days starting reserve.
6. Less than 7 days per move.

	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.
1.	-	12	15	15	16	16
2.	5	-	12	14	13	12
3.	2	5	-	9	7	10
4.	2	2	6	-	6	8
5.	1	1	5	6	-	8
6.	1	4	3	6	6	-

So the time control we play will be [7d/21d/100/21d/0]. The game will start as soon as I get to contact lightvector, so maybe today.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by harvestsnow on Jun 28^th, 2015, 9:51am

http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_99e28bae54de23d2

The Mob is currently Algorias, arimaa_master, aurelian, browni3141, chessandgo, clyring, CraggyCornmeal, DeathCure, deep_blue, half_integer, harvestsnow, Hufflepup, ikalyoncu, Knedlik, PerkofBR, phairland, RonWeasley, Samraku, SilverMitt, Skarn and supersamu.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 28^th, 2015, 7:56pm

The game started, our time is ticking now.
I had the idea to have a "TheOne" account since we also have a "TheMob" account. But since I wasn't sure what you think about this I was so free to start two games, one vs. "TheOne" and one vs. "bot_cyborg_sharp". In one of them I will resign before 2s so it won't turn up in any statistic. So till then (well, it's plenty of time till then) we have to decide whom we want to play.
Since noone else liked the idea of a "TheOne" account we are playing bot_cyborg_sharp now.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by clyring on Jun 29^th, 2015, 2:16am

on 06/28/15 at 19:56:18, deep_blue wrote:

The tradition from previous games is clearly to just use the native account of the opponent. Therefore I see little purpose in a 'TheOne' account.

EDIT: Lightvector, if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind keeping notes on the game including such things as sharp's search depth and eval, and some personal thoughts on the position for those moves where you intervene? It would be great to be able to look them over once the game is done.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by arimaa_master on Jun 29^th, 2015, 6:36am

on 06/29/15 at 02:16:36, clyring wrote:

Lightvector, if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind keeping notes on the game including such things as sharp's search depth and eval, and some personal thoughts on the position for those moves where you intervene? It would be great to be able to look them over once the game is done.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on Jun 29^th, 2015, 7:21am

on 06/29/15 at 02:16:36, clyring wrote:

EDIT: Lightvector, if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind keeping notes on the game including such things as sharp's search depth and eval, and some personal thoughts on the position for those moves where you intervene? It would be great to be able to look them over once the game is done.

Yes definitely. I was already planning to keep notes. 8)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by phairland on Jun 30^th, 2015, 9:47am

Hi, this is my first time participating on a cooperative game, and I just submit my suggestions for move 1g. My question is, how can I see the actually game? or we are only playing through notation.

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by deep_blue on Jun 30^th, 2015, 1:41pm

Look here http://arimaa.com/arimaa/java/ys/ms4/v5/js_sit.cgi?sid=8711491416&grid=3&rand=3010997 .
Or look in the other thread. :)

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by PerkofBR on Jul 8^th, 2015, 5:35pm

Hi!

I will be travelling this mounth, and will not have good access to internet ( my PC is not comming with me ).
So I will be absent in the moves discussion and votings for the next weeks. So, try to hold on until
I come back ;)

I also gonna be absent in the Human Ladder and EEE games.

See you guys, good luck with the game and have a happy july :)

Best regards,
PerkofBR

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by supersamu on Jul 13^th, 2015, 12:35pm

Just wanted to say that I posted an announcement of our game here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/19769481

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by gentamangina on Aug 14^th, 2015, 11:46pm

Hi guys, I'm a noob who frequently loses to bot ladder bots. Can I join the mob too? I'll be like a late-arriving but humble squire. I feel like participating in this quest might help my game, and also be really cool more generally. Thanks!

Title: Re: Sharp vs. The Mob
Post by lightvector on Aug 15^th, 2015, 4:08pm

I'm sure the Mob would be happy to have you! I think currently the mob is active in the 2009 One vs Mob thread (reusing that forum page because a separate page apparently can't be set up this time), so if you go there you can see and participate in the current discussion.

For participating in voting and such, message deep_blue - he's the current Mob coordinator.