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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Game lengths
        
(Message started by: Fritzlein on Jan 8^th, 2010, 10:21am)

Title: Game lengths
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8^th, 2010, 10:21am

Janzert asked yesterday in chat whether game lengths have been increasing recently. I queried over the games of the last seven years, and found no trend over time.

year all gimpe rated humans 1700+ 1900+
---- --- ----- ----- ------ ----- -----
2003 23.4 26.4 30.0 31.1 38.1 48.1
2004 30.0 32.9 36.4 40.7 44.6 46.8
2005 28.7 33.5 35.9 39.1 45.4 47.5
2006 31.1 34.5 34.6 39.7 43.5 45.3
2007 31.4 35.7 35.3 38.7 45.8 46.2
2008 28.8 34.0 34.5 38.2 44.2 46.9
2009 30.5 35.4 35.4 36.7 44.5 45.7

Each column averages a subset of games from the previous column. First I considered all games, then only games with termination g, i, m, p, or e, then only rated games, then only games with both players human, then only games with both players rated over 1700, then only games with both players rated over 1900.

If we take the last column as most indicative of how long a game of Arimaa "should" last, we see no increase or decrease over time. In the early days of Arimaa, there was a pronounced trend to longer and longer games, but in hindsight this can be explained away simply by noting that we weren't very good at Arimaa at first, and the games got longer when they stopped being such blunderfests.

Title: Re: Game lengths
Post by tize on Jan 8^th, 2010, 12:15pm

If we look at the humans column and ignore the value for 2003, we see a weak trend towards shorter games with 2009 as the lowest. This trend doesn't show up in any other column. I think this shows that the new players are slowly outnumbering the old and strong players, with 2009 being a good year when it comes to attracting new players. Hence the big drop of 1.5.

Or maybe it's all in the margin or error, And I'm just seeing what I want to see. :-)

Title: Re: Game lengths
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8^th, 2010, 2:05pm

One thing I didn't control for was the difference in rating between the two players. Mismatches naturally result in somewhat shorter games. If there is a downward trend in the game lengths for natural-conclusion, rated, HvH, 1900+ games, then the reason could be that in the early years those games were all evenly matched, whereas in more recent years some of them have been mismatched.

Title: Re: Game lengths
Post by Janzert on Jan 8^th, 2010, 6:07pm

Thanks for running this Fritzlein. I think it's actually surprising how stable the length is given the large changes in strategy over that time.

Janzert

Title: Re: Game lengths
Post by Hippo on Jan 12^th, 2010, 5:20am

That would be interesting to compare also the lengths of games in WC's (qualification/final).