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        Arimaa >> Say Hello >> Hi all
        
(Message started by: hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 12:34pm)

Title: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 12:34pm

Jonathan here. Loving the game so far. Quick question: I'm climbing the bot ladder -- two down --pretty easy going so far. How come my rating drops each time I beat one of the bots? Cheers.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 28^th, 2011, 12:45pm

on 03/28/11 at 12:34:13, hanuman wrote:

Jonathan here. Loving the game so far.

Great, I'm glad you are having fun!

Quote:

Quick question: I'm climbing the bot ladder -- two down --pretty easy going so far. How come my rating drops each time I beat one of the bots? Cheers.

You gained 19 rating points for beating bot_ArimaaScoreP1 (1290->1309) and gained 40 rating points for beating bot_Aamira2006P1 (1309-1349). You only lost points from losing games to bot_Occam2004CC and TechnicolorLover.

It's easy to get caught up in ratings. I know that I did for many years. But slowly I learned (and am still learning) that the learning adventure is more important. Arimaa games are most fun when the players are fairly evenly matched. The benefit of ratings is to facilitate finding those evenly-matched games. Beyond that, ratings can actually get in the way of the fun, because people play matches that aren't part of the learning adventure in order to pump up their ratings, or avoid games that would be good learning games because they don't want to lose rating points. If you focus on the learning and the fun, that's what you'll get more of. :)

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 1:19pm

I'm not concerned about the ratings. I was just trying to figure them out, since my rating appeared to be 1342 after my two losses and then appeared to drop further after my two victories over the weaker bots. (first to 1309, and then to 1290). Just seemed odd.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by megajester on Mar 28^th, 2011, 1:19pm

on 03/28/11 at 12:45:46, Fritzlein wrote:

It's easy to get caught up in ratings. I know that I did for many years. But slowly I learned (and am still learning) that the learning adventure is more important. Arimaa games are most fun when the players are fairly evenly matched. The benefit of ratings is to facilitate finding those evenly-matched games. Beyond that, ratings can actually get in the way of the fun, because people play matches that aren't part of the learning adventure in order to pump up their ratings, or avoid games that would be good learning games because they don't want to lose rating points. If you focus on the learning and the fun, that's what you'll get more of. :)

In a nutshell!

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by mistre on Mar 28^th, 2011, 3:22pm

on 03/28/11 at 13:19:33, hanuman wrote:

Your rating after your two losses was 1290. It has then climbed back up to 1309 and then 1349. See this page - http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/pastgames.cgi?id=15567.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 3:56pm

hm... 'twould appear you're correct.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 3:57pm

After 30 years of playing Go, I've learned not to care about ratings. ;)

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 28^th, 2011, 4:10pm

on 03/28/11 at 15:57:24, hanuman wrote:

After 30 years of playing Go, I've learned not to care about ratings. ;)

Oh, you are a Go player? What's your Go rating? ;D :D

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 28^th, 2011, 6:54pm

Hard to know. It's a few years since I played extensively. I think I made it to 2 kyu on one of the kiseido server. Do you play?

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 28^th, 2011, 9:38pm

I have only played a handful of games of Go in my life. I probably never got out of the double-digit kyus. I have immense respect for Go, but I have always been too lazy to study it enough to get good at it.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 29^th, 2011, 9:32am

As you know, there are a lot of good "day to learn, lifetime to master" games out there, such as arimaa. The added kicker with go is that it takes a substantial investment to get halfway decent.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 30^th, 2011, 3:00pm

I'm approaching seven years of play for Arimaa. Does that count as a "substantial investment"? :)

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 30^th, 2011, 3:55pm

absolutely. My point is more that the "total beginner" phase of being a go player can last through dozens of games whereas one develops at least some proficiency in other games (such as arimaa) more quickly.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 30^th, 2011, 10:04pm

I'm glad that is your impression of Arimaa. I, too, had the feeling that I could very quickly latch on to something about how to make constructive moves in Arimaa. Others, however, have made the exact opposite point about Arimaa, i.e. that they have no idea what to play for when they start. The latter is definitely how I felt about Go. Yes, the rules of Go tell you to try to surround territory and to capture stones, but it isn't immediately obvious when a territory is "owned" or when a group is "dead", so I might achieve an objective without knowing it, or might think I have achieved an objective when I haven't.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Mar 30^th, 2011, 10:10pm

Yes. At least with arimaa, you have a sense of what the objective is even if you are not sure what the best move is, and you may well be able to tell which of several moves is best. I've taught many people to play go, and often find that even after a dozen games, they barely have a solid idea of what the objective is, or why they need "two eyes" in a group, or how to make them, or whether they are winning or losing.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by UruramTururam on Mar 31^st, 2011, 2:59am

There is something in that. :)

I know the rules of Go to the extent that I'm able to play it somewhat better than just making random moves. But Go seemed always to me as game that lacks clarity. When I watch a match of chess, checkers, reversi or Arimaa (or even Bridge although it's somewhat different) played by a master of that game, I can catch in general what he's trying to accomplish, even if I don't understand how. For Go I'm lost. Moves of a master level player seem totally weird to me and all I know is he's trying to win...

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by robinz on Mar 31^st, 2011, 4:22am

I must say that I agree with that - I've been playing Go for coming up to a year now, and am perhaps about 9kyu at the moment, and I also don't really understand most of the moves in professional games. Nor, when I walk up to a board in the middle of a game, do I really have any idea who's winning without staring at it for quite a long time (and probably doing some actual counting, too). I have seen plenty of games where one player has resigned and I've not thought it obvious at first glance that they were in any way losing! While I accept that much of this has to do with how weak I still am at the game, I think a lot of it is really to do with the nature of the game. (In particular with the fact that, unlike in chess, arimaa and most other games, there isn't a specific winning condition - you actually have to finish the game and then do some counting.)

With arimaa, I've been playing much less time - about 2 months now - yet I feel that I have about as much idea of what's going on in a game (whether one of my own or one that I'm watching) as I do in go. (In other words, not very much, but I'm not totally at sea either.) It's probably a totally wrong impression, but the fact that I have it - and it seems from this thread that others do too - probably counts for something :)

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Apr 2^nd, 2011, 4:06pm

Robinz, you're comment makes a lot of sense. I vaguely remember going through that phase as a go player, and know that most everyone does. This is some of what I meant by my earlier comment. If you are 9 kyu (I'm around 2 kyu, though I haven't played much in a while), you've already put in some real effort, and you still feel like a beginner in certain regards (e.g. not being sure why one player resigned, which would not happen in chess or arimaa except for a total beginner.) It seems to me that the learning curve in Go is an order of magnitude longer and steeper than for any other game I know of. This is neither good nor bad, just the way it is.

I can point to one similarity (for me at least) between go and arimaa. Both are fun even as a beginner. I mean this seriously. There's a lot of puzzle solving to be done and it's fun to work out the possibilities. I never found this with chess.

I appreciate all the responses and would be happy to continue this thread as long as there is interest. It's been a while since I had the opportunity to compare and contrast different abstract strategy games with like minded people.

On a different subject, there's also a way in which arimaa is like stratego, with the pieces of different rank pushing each other to achieve a positional advantage.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 1:00am

I think of chess as having more clarity than Go, in that I can enjoy watching chess games well above my level, but just this morning I watched a game between two chess grandmasters which reached this position:

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| | | | |R| | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| | |P| |P|P| | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |P| | |B| |K| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|P| |P| |R| | |N|
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|P| |P| | |K| | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |P| | | | | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| | | | | | | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| | | | | | | | |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

To me it appears that Black (green in the diagram), who is on move, is up by a pawn and poised to take on e7 as well, gaining a crushing material advantage and extinguishing the last hope of White (red in the diagram). Instead Black resigned! So even a game that is relatively comprehensible can be very baffling at times.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Hippo on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 5:34am

May be due to fork on g8 :)

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by SpeedRazor on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 9:23am

I agree that Chess is less opaque than Go. But occasionally, even Grandmasters commenting on a game are confused about who is winning! Here's one famous example: http://coxschess.tripod.com/attack3.html

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 9:39am

on 04/03/11 at 09:23:25, SpeedRazor wrote:

Nice, I hadn't seen that one. Thanks for the link.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 10:07am

It may be that chess is less opaque than Go, but ultimately, I think Go has greater depth and subtlety. It is difficult to really grasp and put into practice concepts like "aji", "and "playing lightly". These are less tangible than concepts like "I'm up two pawns" or "my rook controls the king's file".

It may also be wroth noting that you can find many go players who used to be chess players. I haven't yet met anyone who gave up go to pursue chess.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 10:13am

on 04/03/11 at 05:34:17, Hippo wrote:

May be due to fork on g8 :)

Not so good at chess myself, but if black Rxp, where is the fork on G8?

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 11:26am

on 04/03/11 at 10:13:01, hanuman wrote:

Not so good at chess myself, but if black Rxp, where is the fork on G8?

I had to ask someone to explain it to me.
1 ... RxP
2 Rg5+ Kh6
3 Nf6
... threatening the fork on g8. Black has a whole move to avoid the fork, but neither the black king nor the black rook can go anywhere. Furthermore, an initial move by Black other than taking the pawn loses to the same sequence. I couldn't figure it out even after seeing the resignation, but I at least feel consoled that Black (a grandmaster) didn't see it coming, and purposely played for this position from a won position, thinking he was converting the win.

Title: Re: Hi all
Post by hanuman on Apr 3^rd, 2011, 12:16pm

Another funny contrast between chess and go. In chess, I have trouble seeing three moves ahead. In go, I can routinely look ahead up to 15 moves or so, but unfortunately, it's often necessary to read farther ahead than that. When you read commentaries of master games, you often read things like "so-and-so moved here because he foresaw the following 40 (or 60 or 80) move sequence leading to such-and-such result."