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   Author  Topic: Arimaa Challenge format for 2006  (Read 4611 times)
Arimanator
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Re: Arimaa Challenge format for 2006
« Reply #45 on: Aug 25th, 2005, 1:01pm »
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on Aug 25th, 2005, 12:46pm, Adanac wrote:

....I'm speculating here, but perhaps these random opening positions would closer to the spirit that Omar had in mind when he created a game with a variable opening setup ??...

 
Not to mention that we may discover things that our sheeplike attitude of immitating each other's openings has kept away from us.  
 
 
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omar
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Re: Arimaa Challenge format for 2006
« Reply #46 on: Aug 25th, 2005, 7:20pm »
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Yeah, I never thought that we would gravitate towards a few opening setups. Maybe we aren't experimenting enough or maybe it's bound to happen regardless. I think it will take some time to get a better idea of where things will go. If we find that just a few setups are still dominating in a few years then I will definitely consider randomizing the opening setup.
 
I think I've also mentioned before that if we find that gold has a noticable advantage due to first move, I will consider limiting golds first move to two steps.
 
Making decisions on such adjustments to the rules just isn't possible until you have a massive collection of real games to look at.
 
For the selection of the human players, the idea of requiring random setup is intersting, but what if one player happens to get really bad setups and another gets good ones. It does add a little randomness to the selection process.  
 
Also Im begining to think that relying only on a players performance against the bots might not be a good thing. How they perform against humans is also important incase next years bots are very different than the previous years bots.
 
So for now I'll keep the selection process for the human players the same as before. But I will be taking the performance against last years bots into consideration.
 
« Last Edit: Aug 25th, 2005, 7:26pm by omar » IP Logged
Fritzlein
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Re: Arimaa Challenge format for 2006
« Reply #47 on: Sep 2nd, 2005, 10:23pm »
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on Aug 25th, 2005, 1:01pm, Arimanator wrote:

Not to mention that we may discover things that our sheeplike attitude of immitating each other's openings has kept away from us.  

 
Fortunately, there are rewards for breaking the mold, even in competitive play.  For example, in the first game of the final of the 2005 World Championship, I set up with Ra7, Ra8, Rc7, Rc8, Rf7, Rf8, Rh7, Rh8, a structure which is probably unsound and seldom played today, but which I believe had a psychological impact on Belbo.
 
Nowadays I am probably one of the least experimental players, but fortunately there are still original thinkers out there who refuse to conform.  JDB often starts with an elephant on a wing, and blue22 puts the elephant behind a trap.  Naveed puts rabbits behind his traps instead of on the wings.  And variations in the opening position are just the beginning of questioning accepted opening theory: we're also seeing lots of "unsound" swarming attacks.  If super-aggressive play turns out to be effective, it will forcibly re-write the way we do our opening setups.
 
In short, although I'm mostly too chicken to play originally myself, I'm happy to note that many other people are not, and glad that I might be wrong about everything.  Smiley
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