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Title: Goals Post by dht on Jul 31st, 2013, 1:15pm I vaguely remember playing a few games on an ancient account when arimaa was first invented, losing a a lot and winning a couple of times then getting bored and moving onto the next shiney thing, that and the game tablefelt if not buggy, then a bit unresponsive and not fun to play with even though the game was interesting. Then I had an inkling I might have an idea, maybe, on how to win the challenge... a day later after reading through papers and pages on arimaa, board game ai etc etc yadda yadda until I'm pretty sure a few arcane mathematical sigils are now burned into my retinas, and after I'd already started writing up my design and plan... ... I had.... Y'know the bright idea that maybe, just maybe, I should, like, yknow... actually play the game? So up I sign, and start bot-bashing gotta get to know my competition right deliberately not reading the how-to-win notes, that would be like reading the spoilers.... Gotta keep it fun... So off I go bot bashing up the ladder, and it's not like playing computer chess, where every victory is by the skin of your teeth; Constantly paranoid from watching out for gotchas that lose you the game. Then play against a slightly stronger ai and it's loss after painful loss for hours, sometimes even days or weeks until slowly figuring out how to consistently win by the skin of my teeth again Even with a loss I understand how I effed up, fix it.... aaand then... dun dun dun and another bot bites the dust. Then I play a delightful match against my first human opponent. and of course I lose, but it's a good game... None of this wham bam thankyou ma'am online chess playing... the game board and the way arimaa plays makes it feel like sitting down at a desk with a real physical board moving one's pieces and watching the opponent move theirs the game's a joy to play, and playing it with a human, it's like jamming live with a good musician. I complain about bots being too easy and they recommend a harder bot HULK GROK BOT! HULK BASH! Beat it first shot, then I hit loc, loc plays strange... beats me, unlike with other bots I don't get why... Beat it second time, beat it again for good measure to make sure it wasn't a fluke still don't get why it felt like playing a human kinda more like playing an alien mind I guess, go onto higher rated bot and back into the usual bash... I'm sure the ladder gets a _lot_ harder further up but, challenge accepted... Gotta beat them all botemon, amright? Anyway the loc thing, I remembered loc for location, I vaguely recalled reading a paper in that pre-signup research binge that loc doesn't do a depth search, loc has goals aimed at locations Setting goals, then adapting each turn to make moves that further those goals without getting distracted and bogged down despite what the opponent throws at you is imperative... Goals are an important part of arimaa theory and I can apply it to chess... The main goal is to checkmate, the goal of the opening is to have a well developed, well understood by you, position at the end... for example if the opponent pushes a piece out early to interrupt your opening, to force it to retreat thereby effectively putting you a turn ahead in development, thus seizing the initiative. Then continue completing your opening. I'm better at chess already... cross training! it ain't just for physical sports Talking of initiative... I do believe I can explain this anomaly: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1163650023 "Before I jump to the conclusion that the setup advantage outweighs the first-move advantage, I should note that the BvH and HvB data somewhat contradict my theory. If the bots have a setup that is not reactive, then humans playing Gold should have move advantage plus setup advantage, while bots playing Gold should have move advantage minus setup advantage. Yet for some reason, there appears to be a greater advantage for bots playing Gold against humans than for humans playing Gold against bots. " http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/10766832 "Initiative (chess) Initiative (chess) Initiative in a chess position belongs to the player who can make threats that cannot be ignored. He thus puts his opponent in the position of having to use his turns responding to threats rather than making his own. [http://chess.about.com/od/reference/g/bldefini.htm] A player with the initiative will often seek to maneuver his pieces into more and more advantageous position as he launches successive attacks. Initiative is often described as "the soul of chess." [http://chessgrrl.blogspot.com/2005/12/initiative-is-soul-of-chess.html] The player who lacks the initiative may seek to regain it through counterattack. The importance of initiative is summed up in the syllogism that initiative is necessary to attack; and attacking is necessary to win (i.e. by capturing pieces and checkmating the opposing king); therefore initiative is needed to win. [http://www.chessmaniac.com/2008/04/importance-of-initiative-in-chess.php] White starts the game with the initiative, but it can be squandered in the opening by accepting a gambit. Players can also lose initiative by making unnecessary moves that allow the opponent to gain tempo, such as superfluous "preventive" moves intended to guard against certain actions by the opponent, that nonetheless require no specific response by them. The concept of tempo is closely tied to initiative, as players can acquire the initiative or buttress it by gaining a tempo." Bots, by ignoring the setup of gold when setting up silver never loses tempo at that point. This could explain the strength of asymmetric setups. not as something intrinsic but that it tends to force a player to keep up their tempo instead of futzing around and losing initiative. I'm also finding I'm using something similar to live and dead stones in go to quickly evaluate positions and focus on what's important... So yeah, ummm.... Hi folks ::) ps. My bot will have a goalkeeper function that sanity checks moves to make sure they're not illegal, like being null and at the very least will quickly emit a valid random move ;D |
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Title: Re: Goals Post by dht on Jul 31st, 2013, 1:28pm should proofread sorry about the lame grammar... tl;dr version, came here for the arimaa challenge... decided I actually like playing it Still I do have plans. or should I say... goals... and am making notes in that bot design plan thingy... I just didn't expect playing arimaa to be quite so much fun, especially against bots... I expected that to be a boring slog |
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