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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> play from  smartphone?
        
(Message started by: DannyV on Jul 12^th, 2013, 8:33pm)

Title: play from smartphone?
Post by DannyV on Jul 12^th, 2013, 8:33pm

simple question- can i play from my smartphone? i have the samsung galaxy s3. i tried starting a game but it doesn't seem to work. anyone know what i need to do to get it to work?

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by supersamu on Jul 13^th, 2013, 4:40am

I just started an Arimaa game with my Samsung GT-S5570 mini and I had no problems doing so.
Here is the game link: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=270165
Maybe you just forgot to hit send to send the setup when you wanted to start the game?
What exactly didn´t work?

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by DannyV on Jul 14^th, 2013, 9:38pm

basically when i click "play" when trying to start a game vs a bot, the game screen does not pop up like it would on my laptop. either nothing pops up, or a screen will pop up that says "you've gone incognito", and then it explains what "going incognito" means ... but still no game board ever pops up for me to start playing? anyone know what i need to do? i'm assuming there's some software i need to download or something but i have no idea what it would be. i'm not great with my computer technology knowledge! need help! :-)

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Jan 19^th, 2014, 12:43pm

Just tried it. It kinda works but it handles absolutely terrible.
A special app made for the phones would be much better.

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Tuks on Jan 19^th, 2014, 4:38pm

there is one, just look up arimaa android, it costs less than a dollar i think, has 10 levels

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Jan 21^st, 2014, 3:27pm

I got it and really like it! :)

I have to admit, that the thing you hear about Arimaa doesn't really apply to me.

The saying that AIs have huge troubles of beating humans that is.

While level 1-3 were very easy on this app, Level 4 already is putting a lot of trouble to me. From like 6 or 7 tries I was able to win only once. Not my last game though, so it's not like I've discovered how to beat it consistently.

So since there's 6 more levels after this, for me it feels kinda like playing chess against Stockfish. Actually, in chess I know what I'm doing and I think I'm putting up a better fight.

Sorry if this post is getting long and drifting away from the topic, but is there probably some basic rules (besides the rules how to play), or let's say principles?

I mean comparable to these for chess:

-occupy the Center with your pawns
-develop the minor pieces
-don't move each of them more than once before you haven't moved all of them unless it is forced
-castle your king
-connect your rooks
-bring your rooks to open files
-look for weak pawns or squares (weak means cannot be defended by a pawn) and attack them
-if your opponent offers an exchange, be the one who retakes, not the one who takes first

and so on... I mean following these simple guidelines make me feel my chess to be quite okay unless I blunder. It doesn't look that different to how others play it.

Not so in Arimaa. I have no clue what I'm doing. I mean I know the rules, I know how to kill stuff, how to occupy traps, how to freeze stuff.
I've read about camel-hostage and kinda grasp the idea of it. But all I do is short-sighted-gut-moves until I eventually lose one of my home-traps and then it goes all the way down... And that is against the supposedely "weak" AI.
I mean up to level 3 the AI was really weak. I could beat level 3 without losing a single piece and then I kinda felt like: "yeah, AI has really trouble with that" I could just go in, take a piece and throw it in my traps... but that suddenly drastically changed on level 4.

Also for chess you can find tons and tons of helpful material. Videos where basic ideas are explained and so on.

I'd like to learn how to consistently beat level 4 to be able to move on to level 5 and so forth. Where to look for helpful stuff for this game?

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by kzb52 on Jan 21^st, 2014, 5:24pm

Glad to hear that you like the game and app!

Here are some things to get you started:

First there is the arimaa wikibook at

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Arimaa

It has lots of free information, although it can be a bit tough to absorb it all.

Fritzlein (the current #1 seed in the world championship) wrote a book called Beginning Arimaa that is a bit easier to understand and is a very good introduction to the game:

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Arimaa-Reborn-Computer-Comprehension/dp/0982427409/

Five time world champion chessandgo (and current #3 seed) also wrote a book. I haven't bought this one (yet) but I assume it's just as good as the first one:

http://www.amazon.com/Arimaa-Strategies-Tactics-Jean-Daligault/dp/145288417X/

Next there is this site, which has many different computer programs and humans at many levels. You'll definitely be able to find a bunch of opponents that are fun and interesting to play against. It's much more interesting than being stuck with one bot on an app. Feel free to play a game or two and leave a post in the Game Analysis thread of the forum to get some free advice. You can also leave comments on the games themselves. In general the good players here are very nice and helpful with that kind of stuff.

Finally, there are a couple of videos and other miscellaneous things that you'll find around the site here which can be very helpful. I won't list them all but there are videos reviewing games (click videos on the left side of the home page), written comments by players left next to past games, and forum posts here by players of all abilities discussing arimaa. Also, you should definitely try to watch some of the world championship games which are happening right now. In addition to seeing the very best play, you can often hear live expert commentary.

And part of the fun of arimaa is that I've basically listed all the major resources that exist. It's a brand new game, and we're discovering and recording the hidden strategies all the time. It can be a little frustrating to not have an enormous amount of material to study but that's more than enough to get started.

Hopefully that helps and good luck with your playing! :)

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by robinz on Jan 25^th, 2014, 12:48am

What kzb52 says is all very true and helpful (I hope) - I just wanted to add that you shouldn't feel bad about losing to a bot at Arimaa. It is not true that "all AIs are bad", what is true (so far, although perhaps not for that long) is that the best bots are no match for the very best human players. You can, if you like, compare the situation now to that in chess in the late 80s/early 90s - computers back then didn't have a hope against the top players, but they were already too strong for average players. It may well be that Arimaa now goes the same way as chess and that bots keep on getting better to the point where they can beat any human player in the world - but the situation is quite different in Arimaa because the game is still relatively new and the strategy is pretty unexplored, even by the current top players.

Welcome to Arimaa - I hope you find it as rewarding and intriguing as I do ;D

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Jan 25^th, 2014, 3:30am

Yes, you are right. Another thing is that I'm playing for about a week now.
This isn't really comparable with 11 years of experience that the top-players and engine-authors have achieved.

I also moved up to level 5 now and doing not that bad there.
Drew first blood in my last game and kinda had a plan. Unfortunately it turned out that pulling that 2nd rabbit was not that good of an idea.
My c3-trap was contested while I took his c6 trap with a camel and a horse (both elefants where stalled at the f3-trap). He eventually overtook c3 and killed 2 defenders while I did the same on c6. But with the numbers lowering his advanced bunny became a liability for me and he scored at even material.

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Jan 31^st, 2014, 5:39am

The difference between Level 3 and 4 was much bigger than the difference between those following. Just managed to beat Level 6.

The key seems to be playing more defensive and when advancing a piece make sure that it either can't be pulled or that it can be brought back where it was in less moves than it costs the opponent to pull it.

When pulling myself making sure that the piece is surrounded from the sides so it can not be unfrozen other then from behind which basically doesn't help or is a rabbit which cannot go backwards anyways.

It also helped a lot that the opponent for a long time did not do anything with his camel.

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by lightvector on Feb 2^nd, 2014, 9:51am

Glad to hear you're enjoying the app.

Level 4 is the first level that really makes an effort to defend its pieces instead of leaving them hanging, so it is quite a jump. But rather than just playing defensively, you can also win if you are good at attacking, such as in this game:
http://pastebin.com/HP9g3M0M

Particularly against weaker levels, you can often take over a trap by advancing horses on the side where the opponent has no camel, or later in the game advancing dogs on the side where the opponent has no horses. In either case, advancing rabbits and other small pieces behind will help out. Levels higher than 4 won't simply leave pieces hanging as in the above game, but you can usually still gain a space advantage and then find ways to make multiple threats.

Above level 4, the bot will almost always occupy b6 and g6 with strong pieces, making an attack harder, so often an intermediate goal is to dislodge that piece. But it's also good to be flexible. Such as in the following game, where after pushing the silver camel away from f-trap, leaving g6 occupied by only a cat and vulnerable to the g3 horse advancing, on move 5s the camel gets a bit too aggressive (this happens often), requiring a switch of plans to hostage the camel first.

http://pastebin.com/mRwr3Gbr

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Feb 5^th, 2014, 3:19pm

You are the developer right?

I coulnd't yet reproduce the result of beating Level 6 as Gold with Silver. I think the one time I beat it, it really was circumstancial.

But maybe I'm also just too bad at fending off goal-attacks. The last game I had a material-advantage (Horse vs. Rabbit) but the Bot managed to score a goal.

Maybe I should try and play level 10 once and then copy it's strategy in order to beat level 6. ^^

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Feb 25^th, 2014, 5:36am

Interesting history of my progression here. I will further fill it out.
I've now beaten Level 7 with both colors and will move on to Level 8.

It's been a whole 20 days since my last post of having beaten Level 6.
So my progress has slowed down quite a bit.

I don't know if the weaknesses still exist in higher levels, but the bot seems too crazy about controlling traps that he spreads too thin in the defense of the baseline. If he spots a rabbit that is advanced far enough, it should reallocate some pieces there even if it cannot see the goal yet.

Edit: Are there any plans to update the version of the bot in the App to a newer, stronger one?

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by lightvector on Feb 26^th, 2014, 10:45pm

Yes, I wrote this app and this bot.

At this point, it would probably be good to get some experience against other players, particularly against other humans. There is a lot of other variety in playing styles and strategies available that you won't tend to see playing the bot.

I don't have any immediate plans to release an upgraded version of the app with a stronger bot. The current bot_sharp, although improved, overall plays quite similarly to the current version, with the same blind spots and strategic flaws and weaknesses, so I don't feel like it's worth the work quite yet to release a new version.

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Feb 27^th, 2014, 7:24am

A particularly interesting feature would be to select other bots in it. As it is case with chess-apps like Droidfish, where you also can play Critter and the likes if you manage to find android-compiles of the engines that is.

I also played other people and bots and indeed realized different playstyles. But the App is still my main-Arimaa-playingfield since it is much more comfortable to play with the drag&drop instead of the annoying arrows on the web-interface on this site.

This might change should beating it on the highest level should become trivial at some point but this probably won't happen before I studied Jeans book, which has to become available for europe yet.

Title: Re: play from smartphone?
Post by Ail on Mar 10^th, 2014, 8:41am

I think I just had the best game I've played so far against Level 9 of the Smartphone-Sharp.

It was a flawless victory in 29 moves. No capture on either side.
The opponent framed my camel and used a ton of pieces to uphold the frame.
Doing this allowed me to attack on the west-wing aswell and following the principles from the strategy&tactics-book.
I froze both his dogs and a rabbit with my horse while avoiding his horse with my smaller-pieces mostly using rabbits to unfreeze.
I tried to bring up Dogs and the other horse to attack c6 but then I realized that they were essentially blocking off the opponents other pieces from leaving the frame-place.

So I launced a goal attack where I essentially only had to fight a dog and 2 rabbits with my horse and two rabbits of my own.

Quite interesting to win this despite my Elephant and Camel never leaving e6 and f6 for almost the whole game.

Before this game I kinda was paranoid about getting my camel hostaged or getting something framed. I also tried doing these things myself. The consequence mostly was me getting swarmed and having a very hard time.

Now I'm not so sure about this anymore. If it takes 7 pieces to maintain a frame, one "strongest free piece", that in itself is prevented from free movement by many pieces ain't really gonna cut it.