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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Opening Theory
        
(Message started by: 722caasi on Jun 11^th, 2010, 6:25pm)

Title: Opening Theory
Post by 722caasi on Jun 11^th, 2010, 6:25pm

I want to know what that current range of opening ideas are. Please post your favorite opening(s) as gold and your favorite responses to common openings as silver. You can go to move 2, but don't start posting game trees.

Title: Re: Opening Theory
Post by JoeHead on Jun 13^th, 2010, 9:15am

Just wait for quantum computer to arrive on the scene.

Then you will have definite anwer...
;)

Title: Re: Opening Theory
Post by megajester on Jun 13^th, 2010, 11:52pm

on 06/11/10 at 18:25:44, 722caasi wrote:

I want to know what that current range of opening ideas are.

Er, we don't need a quantum computer to know what the current range of ideas is ;)

Check out this page (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Arimaa/Introduction_to_Strategy/Initial_Piece_Placement) from the Arimaa wikibook. Things have changed a bit of course but the thinking remains essentially the same...

My personal favourite as Gold is
RHDMEDHR
RRCRRCRR

When playing as Silver I often do exactly the same thing, just switching the camel and elephant if my elephant would be directly opposite gold's elephant. Horses ready for attacking on both wings with dog support, cats step up to defend the home traps... (Maybe there's a fatal flaw in my thinking here, in fact I'd be interested if anybody has any recommendations to make.)

So that's me. I'm sure you'll get something more helpful from the others. Check out chessandgo's openings from last year's WC, he had some funky double horse flank thing I wish I had more time to study...

Title: Re: Opening Theory
Post by Hippo on Jun 14^th, 2010, 2:31pm

OK, this year the popularity of horses on one wing increased even for gold player. Previous year gold started usually by symmetric setup with deviations in the pieces under the trap.
Rabbit under trap has advantage in racings, cat under the trap can step back when defensively pulled to trap by opponent. Silver playing with horses on one wing was popular even on previous year. Silver uses advantage in chosing the non camel wing.

What is the advantage of two horses on one wing?
Except phant horses are the only stones able to attack without fear (EH when m is far away, EHH even when m is near). It's because m is vulnerable in E neighbourhood and e alone has better job with attacking M
(if you maintain m far away, you could swarm the hostage wing as the opponent trap is rather safe and opponent's rabbits are blocked so your ones need not defend and are better prepared to attack) and there are no other stones to be scared of.

Originally they with phant were used to create "Fritzlein trap" for opponent horse, which were transformed to the horse frame if not defended well. Later the horses were not used to start attacking on home trap but rather to attack the opponent's one.

This year c&g x Fritzlein finals suggests the EHH attack is strong enough to be defended without e so the swarm on that wing is possible. The games are more racing now.
There are options to start the other wing counterattack or the almost mirror defense or ...

So chosing horses on one wing is viable option. But you could expect complicated tactical variants. With 99of9 (symmetrical setup) you lose activity for gaining good defences. It could lead to the old school pulling rabbits openning game if the opponent choses the same. But he can chose the activity and he gains tempo advantage.

Actually attempts with assymetric gold setup were even 3 years before, but this year WC games give it more popularity.

So these are my two cents. But I recommend rather to look at the c&g last games.

Title: Re: Opening Theory
Post by omar on Jun 16^th, 2010, 9:37am

I've mostly used the standard setup with all major pieces up front; elephant and camel in the center and horses on the wings. I've experimented a bit with unbalanced setups and a couple rabbits forward, but it's hard for me to gauge if one setup is better than another.

A good start towards developing an opening theory might be to just analyse the games database and catalog the different setups that have been used, how many times they were used (by each side) and how they faired.