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        Arimaa >> Say Hello >> Hello
        
(Message started by: Sconibulus on Nov 11^th, 2009, 9:24am)

Title: Hello
Post by Sconibulus on Nov 11^th, 2009, 9:24am

Hi, I'm one of those new-type players, and I must say, this game seems to have about a million ways to play.

One question though, about the bot ladder, how can you beat the blitz bots? It seems by the time I even see what move has been made I'm down to ten seconds, and clicking for my moves takes another five, even if I've predicted the move, so by move 25-30 I'm down to playing with about a five-second reserve.

Title: Re: Hello
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 11^th, 2009, 4:26pm

on 11/11/09 at 09:24:29, Sconibulus wrote:

One question though, about the bot ladder, how can you beat the blitz bots?

Omar had the same question. :) In fact, he initially considered playing at fifteen seconds per move so unreasonable that he didn't even make the time control available in the early years. The fastest option when I joined in 2004 was thirty seconds per move.

Omar eventually added the blitz time control due to popular demand. But even then he was terrible at it. He lost all of his blitz games on time. I mean all of them; he didn't even survive long enough to lose on the board. He lost more than 200 rating points when he tried to start playing blitz, and was therefore underrated for several years. Only in the past year or so has Omar finally had some success at blitz.

Now there is even one lightning bot playing at eight seconds per move. That's even more impossible!

If playing blitz seems too fast for you, don't put yourself through the torture. Forget the blitz bots on the ladder. You don't have to ever play blitz to become a grandmaster of Arimaa. Some would even argue that it undermines your "real" skill by forcing you to only focus on one-move cheap-shot tactics. You could instead starting playing games against humans with a more relaxed time control. That will give you more time to think about strategy.

If you feel compelled to play blitz, then the only thing I can suggest is to make sure you set your client to a faster animation speed, so that you don't lose a couple of seconds per move watching the pieces slide around. Good luck!

Title: Re: Hello
Post by omar on Nov 12^th, 2009, 12:24pm

on 11/11/09 at 16:26:53, Fritzlein wrote:

If you feel compelled to play blitz, then the only thing I can suggest is to make sure you set your client to a faster animation speed, so that you don't lose a couple of seconds per move watching the pieces slide around.

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. You have to set the animation speed to a faster level and it will save you a couple of seconds on each move; every second counts at this speed.

Also you might want to turn on unrated mode (under the 'Settings' menu) so that you don't destroy your rating while getting better at the blitz speed.

I can't imagine how people play at lightning speed; that's insane :-)

Title: Re: Hello
Post by RonWeasley on Nov 13^th, 2009, 10:34am

I, for one, have never played blitz. It takes me most of a minute just to get my wand pointed in the right direction. There are lots of other ways to enjoy arimaa. Someday, I might try to become a quick-draw artist.