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Title: UMDRevan vs bot_Arimaazilla Game 250752 Post by UMDRevan on Nov 30th, 2012, 2:55pm Hey everyone, I have now officially been playing Arimaa for over a week! (8 days, lol). I'm having a blast experimenting and trying to get better. After a couple of games, I feel like there were several general problems that emerged in my first week of play: 1) blundering away material/defensive lapses 2) aggression bordering on recklessness 3) general lack of game knowledge (it's my first week, I'll give myself that one for now) In any case, I suffered two losses to bot_Arimaazilla, and I decided to go back face the easier bots while trying to keep the above in mind and work my way back up for a rematch. The result is the following game against bot_Arimaazilla: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=250752 I would love to get feedback in general, and especially as it relates to my three concerns above. That said, I'll go through the game myself and offer up my thoughts on the game so that my view of the game can be corrected/improved as well. My primary goals for this game were to avoid blundering away material, and to play a more defensive/reactive game (but be willing to attack if the opportunity presented itself). I played the silver pieces, and tried to start the game conservatively, without trying to obtain or give up a major advantage too early. My first real action started at 5s, where I tried to get bot_Arimaazilla's cat. At 7g, gold's camel froze my dog. Honestly, this irritated me for the simple reason it didn't even cross my mind it might happen (suggestions for avoiding silly situations like this?). In any case, several moves later, gold's elephant was enticed to defend the gold camel, freeing up my camel to be aggressive on the other side of the board. After 13g, I'm disappointed in the way the board appears. It looks a lot more chaotic and disconnected than I wanted it to look at this point in the game, and I'm not entirely sure about my performance while the bot was trying to free the gold camel (something for me to go back and study-- it feels like I missed something). In addition, I was a bit surprised by the number of gold rabbits that were advanced beyond their beginning ranks, and I was unsure how to evaluate this position. My pieces look scattered and uncoordinated. At 17g, my horse was captured. Not too sharp. At least I was able to capture the gold camel as compensation, but it just seemed sloppy and unnecessary to lose the horse. At 20g, I blunder away a dog, and the gold rabbit and elephant are a bone in my throat. Over the next few moves, I attempted to force goal/go on the offensive, as it felt like I had lost control of the game and needed to make something happen. By 27s, it was clear to me that forcing goal was not going to happen, so I changed the thinking and started to try to get back to my listed goals and see about fixing my defensive setup, where there are several advanced rabbits for gold. 30s is where lucid thought returned, and I abandoned the silver rabbit on F3 to turn my dog loose on the gold pieces in the F6 quadrant. It seems my attempt to advance my rabbit (while I disliked it generally) seemed to spread out gold's pieces and give my dog opportunities to capture material. Better. At 37g, I blunder away my other horse (sigh). At least in return, I was able to completely clear out the F6 quadrant from goal threats, and my elephant, which was disappointingly locked down in defense in the C6 quadrant suddenly became a positive, where it's extremely unlikely that gold will able to reach goal. Not terribly important, but I felt the position at 43g never really needed to happen. I avoided any loss of material, but I felt like sloppiness prevented an easier win. And lastly, I got revenge on bot_Arimaazilla with a win. In summary, I was happy to have blundered away less material than in other games I've played, but I still blundered away material, so I'm rather annoyed with myself. I was surprised by and ineffective against gold's advanced rabbits until rational thought returned and I established a defensive presence. I'm really disappointed I allowed my elephant to get tied down to passive defensive duties, despite it perversely turning into a positive after capturing gold material in the F6 quadrant. I was happy to turn things around and get the win (and revenge!), but I would love some feedback on these issues. Thanks, and happy playing! |
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Title: Re: UMDRevan vs bot_Arimaazilla Game 250752 Post by FireBorn on Dec 4th, 2012, 3:09pm Hi there. Some comments. 6s, maybe better to pull the cat twice backwards and let your dog stop next to the trap. The cat still cannot escape if unfrozen and the dog is safer there. 7s, in general, don't send a horse to fight a camel. Better to spend moves getting your elephant to the camel, which you did on the next move. 9s, "framing" the camel, but it can still escape, and on top of that it becomes unfrozen. The camel was better left where it was, and the move spent on something else. re: 13g, I think the position looks fine. You have a horse hostage and a cat capture threat. Your elephant is more centralized than his and is more of a threat to his camel than his is to yours. And there are too many pieces on your back ranks for gold's advanced rabbits to be a threat and are probably more a liability for him than anything. 14s, perhaps better to spend moves moving your elephant to his camel or your camel away from his elephant. re: 17g, you will learn rules of thumb for trap defense as you play more. One of them is, you can safely have one defender supporting a trap as long as it is more than two steps away from any stronger attacking piece. re: 27s, good, cats are well-allocated to fighting advanced rabbits. You'll stop making blunders with practice. I wouldn't worry about that too much. You're doing great for only one week of play. |
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