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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> "Thinking time" in saved games
        
(Message started by: rick on Aug 11^th, 2005, 11:30pm)

Title: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by rick on Aug 11^th, 2005, 11:30pm

Hi! I'm a new Arimaa player and I like it a lot. :)

One thing I like about it is that there's a rich game history to peruse. In some games I see some inconsequential moves made by the humans and I wonder about the motivation. One thought I had is that if you're under time pressure but you're in a relatively stable position you can fiddle around for a few moves and build up your time reserve for when you make your big attack and need to think hard.

I'm sure that the time it takes for players to decide their move is highly useful information when learning from games. It would be nice if the clocks read something sensible when you view a game.

What does everyone think?

Richard

Title: Re: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by 99of9 on Aug 11^th, 2005, 11:59pm

Hi Rick,

I'm not sure how much you already know about the game, so you may already know this...

You are right that sometimes humans play simple time-saving moves to build up their clock. This usually only occurs in 15-30s games.

In longer games, a move that may seem inconsequential to a beginner is often important to positional play. For example, if there is nothing pressing happening on the board, and no great attacking options open, a player will often rebalance his back rows, just to make them better the next time they are required for defence. Another case is when one player has taken the other's piece hostage. The hostage taker will often want to "rotate out" their big pieces (ie get to a position where the big pieces are no longer required to keep the hostage). This often takes quite a lot of moves of fiddling around until the pieces are in the right order.

If you ever see me making an inconsequential move, you are welcome to ask what it was about! I'd say most other players would be happy to answer this kind of question too.

After all that though, I agree with you, it would be nice to have the time controls showing up properly when replaying a game. Omar does save that information (for the last year to two years of games), so it is certainly possible. I understand he is overhauling the game interface, so perhaps he'll be able to incorporate your suggestion when the new one comes out.

Title: Re: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by PMertens on Aug 12^th, 2005, 12:25am

Sometimes I make inconsequential moves because I have no clue what to do and do not want my reserve to go down.
Sometimes I just wait for the bot to make not-so-inconsequential moves (bad moves he does not see as bad). Those are quite important in several botbashing games.

Quote:

If you ever see me making an inconsequential move, you are welcome to ask what it was about! I'd say most other players would be happy to answer this kind of question too.

Same here ;-)

I believe that time would be a very interesting information.

Title: Re: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by RonWeasley on Aug 12^th, 2005, 8:33am

Another reason to make an inconsequential move is in a complex position where you notice the opponent is under time pressure. If you can come up with this move quickly, you can accentuate the time pressure and maybe make the opponent blunder. This only works if you have an advantage as insurance against a blunder of your own. I haven't seen this gamesmanship used in practise, but I saw several opportunities in last year's WC.

Title: Re: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by omar on Aug 12^th, 2005, 11:40am

on 08/11/05 at 23:30:28, rick wrote:

Hi! I'm a new Arimaa player and I like it a lot. :)

Hi Richard. Thanks for the nice comments.

Quote:

One thing I like about it is that there's a rich game history to peruse.

I've tried to preserve all the games right from when Arimaa was launched. The complete database of all games can be downloaded from the downloads page.

Quote:

I'm sure that the time it takes for players to decide their move is highly useful information when learning from games. It would be nice if the clocks read something sensible when you view a game.

Great suggestion. I just added it to my todo list for the Arimaa client. I do save the times of when each move was received in the database so this can be done. Currently it does show in the chat area the average time per move each player took.

Problem is that I don't get as much time to work on Arimaa as I would like between work, family and other commitments so it may be a while before Im able to make this change.

Title: Re: "Thinking time" in saved games
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 12^th, 2005, 5:30pm

Rick,

I concur with those who encourage you to ask about specific moves that you don't understand. It is as simple as posting a comment to the game. If you ask me, I will sometimes say that it was just a bad move and I couldn't think of a better one at the time, but sometimes there is a very good reason for moves that appear pointless at first. I know that when I watch high-level chess matches I often wish I could ask the players, "Why did you do this?" and, "Why didn't you do that?"

Before long, you will realize that you can recognize a bad move when you see one. Then courtesy might restrain from pointing out poor moves. But for a while at least you can capitalize on your status as novice. :-)