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        Arimaa >> Game Analysis >> Game 145879 (181923) - Woh vs Fritzlein
        
(Message started by: Korhil on Jun 20^th, 2010, 9:04pm)

Title: Game 145879 (181923) - Woh vs Fritzlein
Post by Korhil on Jun 20^th, 2010, 9:04pm

Golds setup choice is generic enough in this game that Silver could use this response setup quite often if the Silver player wanted to.

I picked this game because Gold has setup very much in the 99of9 fashion, and Fritzlein as Silver has used a setup that players other than himself might want to use more often. As opposed to Fritzlein's common setup with 4 Rabbits forward, which isn't used by very many other players frequently.

Move 3g seems a bit passive. It's the sort of move I'd likely play myself, but I don't think it is objectively correct/best.
5g undoes much of 3g, losing time.

The position after 10s appears to me to be very strong for Silver, and likely even enough of a positional advantage to win the game with correct play.

What other options does Gold have in the early game?
I think Gold has to be on the offensive, or certainly not be quite as passive from such at early point in the game.

How else could Gold proceed with what is accepted as a fairly normal sort of setup against this response?

Cheers,
Martin

Title: Re: Game 145879 (181923) - Woh vs Fritzlein
Post by FireBorn on Jun 20^th, 2010, 9:56pm

Link please? :)

Edit: nm, found it

Title: Re: Game 145879 (181923) - Woh vs Fritzlein
Post by Fritzlein on Jun 20^th, 2010, 10:35pm

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=145879

A variant of this setup for Silver would be to put the elephant on c7 instead of e7. Silver wants the elephants in the west instead of the east, so that the silver camel becomes sheriff of the east. If the c7-elephant can force this, Silver has an early advantage. If not, i.e. if Gold can force the silver elephant to cross east, then starting on e7 would save time.

The point of 3g is to get the gold camel opposite the two silver horses, which is an active idea that I like. But it is passive insofar as there is no reason to slide the camel along the second rank. Gold might as well move the camel directly to c3 and let the c2-cat stand pat.

The idea behind 5g is also not wrong as far as I know. It could be that putting camels opposite in the east is OK, particular after Silver has committed a rabbit to h6 that the gold camel could pull. But you are right that it wastes time to shift the camel back and forth. Either 3g or 5g could be right as far as our undeveloped opening theory knows, but playing both just gives Silver time to get rolling.

I quite disagree that Silver has positionally won after 10s. The fighting has barely begun. The silver rabbit on h4 is in great danger, which gives Gold a nice counterweight to Silver's advantageous position in the east.

Gold's two main plans against the EHH setup are to switch the camel to that wing and attack with EMH, or to switch the camel to the other wing and play a kind of rabbit pulling game. I don't know which is better, but in either case the player who executes better will win, not because of the opening, but because of what follows.

The middlegame is still king of Arimaa, and if you want to improve your winning percentage most per time invested, the middlegame is what you should study. Second I would study goal attacks. Openings I would waste as little time studying as possible, because you can always pull an Adanac and complicate directly into a middlegame, as per his ongoing Postal Mixer game against me.