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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> May Botbash: discussion thread
        
(Message started by: IdahoEv on May 1^st, 2006, 7:40am)

Title: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 1^st, 2006, 7:40am

May's botbash is (hopefully) to learn to forge an offense without using your elephant; saving the elephant only for defense.

In brief, you can't move your elephant further forward than the 4th rank, and you can't blockade the opposing elephant ... no bait-and-tackle this time; it's time to try something different.

Full rules at:
http://idahoev.com/arimaa/challenge_2006_05.html

You win points for each bot for which you hold the fastest win under these conditions. The winner is the player with the most points on June 1st. To encourage active competition, I am splitting the $15 prize: $10 to first place, $5 to second place.

Good luck!

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Fritzlein on May 1^st, 2006, 8:49am

The way these results are already coming fast and furious, I'd say you picked another winner of a contest. You may be too busy updating the results to have any time to play yourself!

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Fritzlein on May 1^st, 2006, 12:20pm

You set us a cute little additional challenge by not specifying how the points per bot were generated from their respective ratings. It seems I can generate the same list of point values from the ratings of the bots by taking

(Rating/579.9)^4

and rounding to the nearest integer. It matches the points you gave row by row. But strangely, it doesn't match if I divide by 580. This sets another puzzle: Why 579.9?

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 1^st, 2006, 2:44pm

on 05/01/06 at 12:20:46, Fritzlein wrote:

Wow that was fast, yes it's a fourth power function; i played around a bit and this is what felt right. There's a different way to write the formula wherein the constant(s) will make instant and obvious sense.

Since you seem to enjoy the challenge, I'll let you find that on your own. ;-)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 1^st, 2006, 3:14pm

on 05/01/06 at 08:49:38, Fritzlein wrote:

You may be too busy updating the results to have any time to play yourself!

Yes, I think I'll need to write a module that handles the results automatically.

It depends how quickly I can get JDBC for MySQL working on my webhost; my last attempt to get JDBC/MySQL working on a Linux box did not go so well.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Fritzlein on May 1^st, 2006, 3:30pm

on 05/01/06 at 14:44:40, IdahoEv wrote:

Since you seem to enjoy the challenge, I'll let you find that on your own. ;-)

That was nice of you to leave me another puzzle instead of answering! Now I don't want to spill the beans in case anyone else wants to try. Let me just test whether I have the answer. If I had accurately converted from your notation to mine, I would have said

(Rating/579.7739)^4

Right?

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 1^st, 2006, 4:00pm

Yes, I think you've got it. I get 579.7739063. ;)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by frostlad on May 1^st, 2006, 9:50pm

I'm starting to see that this is a very hard challenge if you can't entice the bot to let you frame something. If the bot is very defensive it is hard to launch an attack on one wing or the other without getting in trouble.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 2^nd, 2006, 2:03am

I believe you have quite a few scores to update here. ;) (I am not only talking about me)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 2^nd, 2006, 2:08am

on 05/02/06 at 02:03:24, Arimanator wrote:

I believe you have quite a few scores to update here. ;) (I am not only talking about me)

Indeed I do. Which is why I am instead working on a program to do it for me, as there is absolutely no way I can keep up with you guys!

I hope to have it finished soon. Don't worry - your wins are not going unnoticed or unrecorded!

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 2^nd, 2006, 3:44am

I went ahead and did a manual update. You guys have done a lot of work!

I read the current standings as:
Arimanator: 1st place with 227 points
frostlad: 2nd place with 172 points
99of9: 3rd place with 29 points
IdahoEv: 4th place with 18 points

I notice a very strong trend towards the fast and/or blitz bots.

The automatic scoring tool is about half done.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 2^nd, 2006, 4:15am

on 05/02/06 at 03:44:26, IdahoEv wrote:

You forgot my win against Gnobotblitz (84 points)

~~Which puts my total at 311~~

Actually there is a mix up of the scores here I won against : bot_GnoBot2005Blitz,bot_GnoBot2005Fast ,bot_Loc2005Blitz,bot_Arimaazon,bot_Loc2005Fast.

Which makes 84+69+54+53+46 = 306

I believe there may be some mistakes in Frostlad total as well. (I didn't check but it felt that way).

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 2^nd, 2006, 6:49am

on 05/02/06 at 06:26:48, 99of9 wrote:

bot_Bomb2005P1 as silver in 31 moves in game 30493

http://www.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/replayFlash.cgi?gid=30493&s=b

Idaho, you might want to check this one out and see if it is violating the spirit of your rules. I've commented the game.

I don't think so. The E was never boxed in. It always had an escape at least by pushing up the horse. There is no way that one could refuse that game while keeping any of the others. Except the XXXscoreYYY ones that don't really count.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by jdb on May 2^nd, 2006, 7:42am

One way I use to see how boxed in an elephant is, is to count how many steps the elephant would need to occupy one of the four central squares. (Assuming the opponent just passes)

So a full blockade would be infinite, (well not quite, but a really big number)

For example, In 99of9's game on move 22w, I think that gold needs 11 steps (Is this correct?) to get the elephant back to the centre. Silver needs two steps.

Maybe defining a blockade in terms of steps to return to the centre would work?

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 3^rd, 2006, 4:09am

Whoever wins against BombCC or Bombp2 will have earned my undying respect.

Bomb is so defensive that that tactic (keeping the elephant at home) is precisely the one it's been fine-tuned to defeat, not counting of course the bait and tackle for which it is the biggest sucker. ;D

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 3^rd, 2006, 7:13am

Hey folks; I'll try to finish the auto-scoring system in the next couple of days, because it's pretty clear from the number of errors I already have that doing it by hand is already totally untenable.

99of9's win over Bomb definitely skirts the spirit of the rules, but it's within the letter and Bomb *did* have an escape so I don't feel the need to amend the rules for just one instance. Besides, it would mean rewriting the no-barricade heuristic I've already coded. If it starts becoming the major technique people use to win in the challenge, I'll think about it again. Best solution: for 99 or someone else to generate a faster win against the same bot.

Anyhow, sorry for disappearing for a day. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the server was down, so since I had a fairly slow work day I took the whole day off to read Dan Simmons' new book Olympos cover to cover. I definitely needed the 24-hour vacation, and the book had been calling to me ever since I finished Ilium three weeks ago and my sister offered to loan me the new sequel...

Okay actually I'm not sorry, as it was a very pleasant 17 hours with that book. :-)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 8^th, 2006, 4:53am

Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle?

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by frostlad on May 8^th, 2006, 9:55am

I'll work on it once I'm done with this semester. Then I'll take my shot at his records.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 8^th, 2006, 12:02pm

on 05/08/06 at 04:53:37, IdahoEv wrote:

Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle?

About updating that score board?

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 9^th, 2006, 12:37am

on 05/08/06 at 12:02:24, Arimanator wrote:

About updating that score board?

I've been buried under work and only sleeping three hours/night on average for about the last week. I'll get to it, don't worry.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Swynndla on May 9^th, 2006, 5:01am

on 05/08/06 at 04:53:37, IdahoEv wrote:

Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle?

Perhaps the opposite of what we thought is happening here ... perhaps people are seeing that it would require sooo much work just to be able to compete for first place, and so are put off? ... and perhaps if it was shortest number of moves againsts the highest rated bot (like last month), then people might decide to have a crack ... even towards the end of the month too? If so then the rules were changed to stop several people fighting over one bot, but now we have one person fighting several bots ;)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by OLTI on May 9^th, 2006, 3:05pm

I was lucky to ;) becouse I couldn't reproduce that win again, anyway in several games i reached a forced goal but couldn't win with only 3 steps ;)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 9^th, 2006, 3:15pm

Arimanator, I don't think Swynndla was criticising you or anything. He was just pointing out the effect of the rules change I made.

on 05/09/06 at 05:35:23, Arimanator wrote:

You fail to notice that there have been even less participants to last month's contest

On the contrary, that was exactly his point: because of the new rules structure, not very many people are actively playing.

Last month, it only took one game to win. So people could just play against Bomb and whoever got lucky won.

This month, it takes a lot of hard work to win against that many bots. You've worked very hard! A lot of people are probably looking at the contest and thinking "wow ... I'd have to play like 300 games just to have a chance of beating Arimanator", and so they may not be bothering to play at all! (And that's not the reason he's not playing .... Nathan said before the contest started that he was not going to play botbash this month, because he wanted to spend the time working on writing his own bot.)

Nobody questions your hard work or that you deserve the win, and Swynndla certainly wasn't attacking you. If he was criticising anybody, it was me for the rules I picked - but I don't think he was doing that either.

He was only making a neutral observation about this month's rules structure.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Swynndla on May 9^th, 2006, 9:16pm

Arimanator, I obviously should have chosen my words more carefully, as I wasn't trying to criticize anyone.

Also, I should say, Arimanator, well done on your bot bashing this month. You really do deserve to win the May bot challenge.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 10^th, 2006, 1:39am

on 05/09/06 at 21:16:46, Swynndla wrote:

Sorry for overreacting Nathan but some of these bots were really hard to beat and the idea that I could have done all this for nothing really put me on edge.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Swynndla on May 10^th, 2006, 2:32am

Indeed, you make it look easy (but I'm sure it's not!).

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on May 11^th, 2006, 5:50pm

on 05/11/06 at 14:36:14, Fritzlein wrote:

Seems to me if everyone else has 0 points, Arimanator should get both first and second prize. That's a lot of territory to defend, though.

Absolutely, I'm happy to implement that rule. If there is no second place player with any points, the first place winner is also awarded the second place prize.

Seems eminently fair.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Arimanator on May 12^th, 2006, 2:40am

on 05/10/06 at 02:32:26, Swynndla wrote:

Indeed, you make it look easy (but I'm sure it's not!).

I apologize for my post Nathan. It was completely uncalled for but unfortunately, it coincided with a general lack of acknowledgment of the difficulties involved plus the amount of time one has to devote to achieve such a result. I thought that the goal of these contests was to see how it's done with different bots not whether it's done by one or ten participants. I intent to try it with every bot that in my view can fall for this strategy. Maybe that means all of them although I won't be trying it with Gnobot2006 since 99 decided to ruin it for everybody by ruling out botbashing for his bot even tho he participated to the botbashing last year. Whatever!
I would appreciate if the score board was updated once in a while, it seemed to me that it stopped as soon as I went alone on my bashing spree, I hope that I was mistaken.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Swynndla on May 12^th, 2006, 4:29am

No worries Patrick ;)

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by Fritzlein on May 31^st, 2006, 10:38pm

Well, with Arimanator's domination unchallenged even though he didn't play the last part of the month, I only have two questions:

Was it a clean sweep?

and

How will you get the prize money to him?

Maybe Omar can tell you his PayPal account if he has one.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by 99of9 on May 31^st, 2006, 10:55pm

Quote:

Was it a clean sweep?

I for one was swept. I was planning to play a game or two at the end of the month, but by then he was out, so wouldn't have been able to respond.

Title: Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
Post by IdahoEv on Jun 5^th, 2006, 4:33pm

Just a quick update: I was away all last week at my 10th-year college reunion, and unfortunately they did not have internet access easily available at the event, so that's why y'all didn't hear from me for a week.

I'm catching up on some work this morning, but I will score the challenge tonight or tomorrow (to see if there is a second place or if Arimanator swept), and get the next challenge up!

Arimanator, please email me at evan at idahoev dot com to arrange for me to get you your prize money. I sent Nathan's prize to him by paypal last month. If you are set up with paypal that's the easiest, otherwise I can postal mail you a cashier's check.

Oh, and congratulations on kicking some serious ass for May! :-)