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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Jean's book has been released !!!
        
(Message started by: omar on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 9:05am)

Title: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by omar on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 9:05am

As most of you know Jean Daligault (chessandgo) the four time Arimaa world champion has been working on a book titled Arimaa Strategies and Tactics for several years now. In fact some of you have helped Jean with proofreading the book. Well I am happy to announce that the book is final here.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/store/Daligault/

I want to congratulate Jean on finishing this monumental task. Most of the time while he was working on the book, he was also working on completing his Phd. So it is quite amazing what he has done.

Since 2006 Jean has been an active member of the Arimaa community, participating in the events, providing comments and suggestions in the forum and now giving the Arimaa community a book that captures what he has learned so far about Arimaa and sharing that precious knowledge with us. When I say giving the book to the community, I am not kidding. The original PDF of his book is available for download for free. The physical copy of the book is also available at a very low price and all proceeds from the book will go towards increasing the prize fund for the human world championship. We want to encourage everyone to not just download the free copy, but also to buy a physical copy.

Where Karl's book provided a great introduction to Arimaa for the general public not familiar with the game. Jean's book is geared towards those who have started playing Arimaa and want to improve their game. The two books complement each other and together they help more people become aware of Arimaa and reach higher levels of play in shorter time then has ever been possible before.

Jean, thanks so much for the book and everything else you've have done for us.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by robinz on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 9:50am

Wow - I'm speechless, thanks Jean! ;D

I have already downloaded and saved the PDF and hope to work through it at my leisure over the coming weeks and months. I doubt it'll improve my mediocre Arimaa ability very much, but it'll sure be an interesting read. I certainly didn't expect it to be free - many thanks :)

(And don't worry - if I enjoy it, as I expect to, I'll probably end up buying it ;))

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by camperman on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 10:05am

I just read the opening chapters while waiting for the hanzack game to get underway and I think I learned more in 10 minutes than most of my previous studying. Thanks Jean!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Katsunami on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 10:56am

While I'm getting a bit better, I still lose a lot of games because of stupid oversight and lack of knowledge. Rather than spending a year or more to find everything out myself, maybe I'll buy both Fritzlein's and C&G's book.

Thanks for writing it, Jean :)

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by chessandgo on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 11:45am

Cheers :)

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 12:09pm

Thanks, Jean! Since I already read a draft, I made free to submit a review on Amazon and on Board Game Geek. I believe that, even though the PDF is freely available, many people like me will feel that a bound copy is a must-have. I need the book side-by-side with a board; it is too awkward with my computer screen.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Katsunami on Apr 22^nd, 2012, 12:21pm

Oh, the pdf is linked on the page. I'll take a look on my tablet.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by UruramTururam on Apr 23^rd, 2012, 2:13am

Wo-ow, great.

I should read it soon (TM). Thank you Jean!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Swynndla on Apr 24^th, 2012, 5:11am

Oh you are so kind and generous to the community c&go!! I tip my hat to you sir!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Arimabuff on Apr 24^th, 2012, 7:28am

This is a must have, an historic achievement, the dawn of a new breed of Arimaa players!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Dolus on Apr 24^th, 2012, 1:55pm

My copy arrives Wednesday :D

I said this over in BGG, but I really like that the PDF is free so that I can swap between computer and hardcopy to read.

Now hanzack will have his turn to write a book, right? ;)

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 24^th, 2012, 7:03pm

on 04/24/12 at 13:55:58, Dolus wrote:

Now hanzack will have his turn to write a book, right? ;)

I'll bet the next Arimaa book is a puzzle collection rather than a strategy guide. User ingwa (developer of Badger) turned me on to the idea. I think it is very plausible because

* It will be hard to write a strategy guide that tops Jean's.
* Puzzles can be culled in an automated way from the database of games by a developer, so there are more people who could create this kind of book.
* There is a large audience who would like more tactical examples to practice on.

The amount of organization needed for such a book could vary drastically. Fred Reinfeld's "1001 Ways to Checkmate" is a classic, even though the positions are only loosely organized by theme. On the other end of the scale, I owned a book on chess tactics called "SchachPraktikum" which had more text, illustrative commentated examples before the bulk of uncommentated examples, a tighter organization, a better grading by difficulty, and a selection of puzzles at the end where the reader wasn't told what theme to use.

The important thing in either case is the sheer bulk of practice problems. The puzzles we already have on arimaa.com are great as far as quality is concerned, but we simply don't have enough of them. Given the proliferation of strong Arimaa engines, there's no reason this lack of a large problem collection couldn't be addressed.

Here's hoping it won't be another three years before the third Arimaa book is published!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by arimaa_master on Apr 26^th, 2012, 9:19am

Thank you very much Jean, much appreciated!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by ocmiente on Apr 26^th, 2012, 11:19am

Got my physical copy in the mail yesterday. Looks and feels great. Thanks Jean!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by megajester on Apr 26^th, 2012, 3:59pm

I just downloaded the PDF. Hat's off to you Jean, what a gift!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by chessandgo on Apr 28^th, 2012, 4:36am

Thank you all :) I'm glad the book is finally out, it was long overdue.

As I said in the BGG thread in response to Fritz mentioning the French sentence structures, I'll be updating the pdf version. So I'd be delighted to have your feedback on things you think could be improved (be they english-related or arimaa-related or ...)

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by aaaa on Apr 28^th, 2012, 12:08pm

Thank you so much for making your book publicly available. A specific point concerning its actual content:

The position shown on page 24 is used to demonstrate a tactical trick with which one saves material by rendering the capture threat harmless because it could then be answered by a false protection capture. However, there is still 1g Ec4e Ed4e Ee4e Ra3e to consider. At first, it looks like it would lead to (material) disaster in light of the obvious 1s He3n ed3e He4n ee3n, but after releasing my bot on the resulting position, it comes up with 2g Rg4n Ef4n He5n He6e(!), muddling the whole thing with a credible-looking goal attack.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by chessandgo on Apr 28^th, 2012, 12:40pm

Oh, I messed up there :( The original position had the Ra3 on a2 (or maybe c1), so that defending with the Elephant on f4 would lose either the Horse or the Dog on c3, but I changed it for the sake of not letting silver have a strong attack around the weakened c3 after the solution move. Major oops. And thanks for the analysis after the Horse push to e5. I'll have to find a better position I guess.

It reminds me a (short) discussion with megajester on designing positions (for a video of his). It's always obvious when we first have the idea of what we want to stress, but whenever we come up with a position, there are always other things going on.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by hyperpape on Apr 30^th, 2012, 8:23am

I found the reference "thinking again..." on page 42 to be a bit hard to parse. It wasn't immediately clear that you meant the position from the previous page.

Also, if I have a game number and want to see the comments on it, how can I find it? I can find the game itself but not the comments so far.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by rbarreira on Apr 30^th, 2012, 8:49am

on 04/30/12 at 08:23:12, hyperpape wrote:

Also, if I have a game number and want to see the comments on it, how can I find it? I can find the game itself but not the comments so far.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=XXXX

Replace XXXX with the game id.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by browni3141 on Apr 30^th, 2012, 8:55pm

Thanks for being awesome and providing your book for free.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by chessandgo on May 1^st, 2012, 4:44am

on 04/30/12 at 08:23:12, hyperpape wrote:

I found the reference "thinking again..." on page 42 to be a bit hard to parse. It wasn't immediately clear that you meant the position from the previous page.

Yes, in the whole chapter Gold is the hostaging side and Silver the hostaged side, and the fact that the example game on page 42 has colours reversed is kind of annoying. If you have a suggestion for a clearer way to warn the reader about this, feel free!

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by hyperpape on May 1^st, 2012, 10:30am

"Returning to the example from the previous page"? Or "returning to the case where the gold elephant has a camel hostage on h3" if you want a more generic setup.

I think noting the reversal actually just complicates things.

I didn't say it in the first post, but I'm enjoying this book tremendously. At my level, I can still grasp the examples, and they're sufficiently concrete that I think I can make use of them in my games.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by chessandgo on May 2^nd, 2012, 7:54am

Originally I wasn't mentioning this issue, but my proof-readers felt it was better to make it clear. I feel like the most important is that the reader should not be confused as to the role of Gold and Silver throughout this section.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by aaaa on May 3^rd, 2012, 12:25pm

on 04/28/12 at 12:40:02, chessandgo wrote:

I think the example is still fine and that the "solution" is indeed the best move in that position; you just have to rewrite the text such that the move Ec4e Ed4e Ee4e Ra3e is addressed somewhere, even if that involves you pulling rank as the author and doing a bit of handwaving (in order not to stray too far from the topic). I believe that that would still be better than the move being left out altogether, which, evidently, can confuse anyone realizing its possibility, thus undermining the pedagogical effectiveness of the example.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by UruramTururam on May 18^th, 2012, 7:28am

I've read the pdf. Now I'm buying the paper version to study it page by page. Reading Fritz's book improved my playing level and I'm sure reading Jean's book will also do so.

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by leo on Jul 4^th, 2012, 1:45pm

I waited for this book for so long but I didn't manage to be there at the release date. :-[
Thank you for such a nice surprise ^__^
I'll be back with feedback...

Title: Re: Jean's book has been released !!!
Post by davebliz on Aug 12^th, 2023, 11:18pm

Are the PDFs still available? I've already ordered the paperback but would also like to have digital copies. Thanks.