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Topic: clojure vs. Marwin_2010CC (156064) (Read 763 times) |
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clojure
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clojure vs. Marwin_2010CC (156064)
« on: Oct 1st, 2010, 2:52pm » |
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I had a long game with Marwin since I decided to give fair amount of play before giving a short review on Arimaa.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=156064&s=b
I'm not going to specific, but I really like to hear the biggest mistakes that are easy to notice for others. First of all, did I correctly play the opening before framing the horse? And after the opponent let go of his horse, what was the problem of my play, since I had really hard time to get anything done.
I think it was about 3-4 hours game, and I was getting impatient at the end, so I when I got a place where opponent's elephant left east side, I decided to sacrifice, win time, and try for a race. Luckily it worked.
How should I have played without racing? I realized at some point that I had used my camel very badly; in general I used too high profile pieces to try to trap smaller pieces. After shuffling pieces, I think my structure seemed really promising. Still it felt hard to get anything done.
I was afraid of that opponent would run with his west side (from gold's viewpoint) rabbits, that was also a reason to move my camel to west. Should I have attacked more directly horse?
Thanks in advance. I really need help to understand my problems and limited view.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 1st, 2010, 2:54pm by clojure » |
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Nombril
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Re: clojure vs. Marwin_2010CC (156064)
« Reply #1 on: Oct 1st, 2010, 4:46pm » |
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I actually watched the middle/end of your game live, I was impressed that you accomplished a horse frame so easily!
"correctly play the opening" - I don't think there is a correct way. But your result - a horse frame you can quickly rotate your elephant out of - seems like you have definitely won the opening!
For moves around range 11-20... pulling and capturing rabbits is slow, but probably a good safe choice against an opponent that is staying with a framed horse. (Might only work against a bot?) But you did advance a lot of rabbits as well, so that made it a bit less effective if you aren't going to follow it with a swarm at c6. At 13g, I'd be very tempted to move your free horse to b6 and work to take control of c6 trap. And again at 20g, you could move the free horse to b6. At this point, it seems even better with your advanced rabbit and two less silver rabbits. At 36g when you move your horse to b6, you have to push a silver piece into the trap, and there are lots of extra silver pieces around to keep it safe. So it isn't a very fast attack at that point.
For 20 - 42: I think part of the problem was tactics. If you play a home game, I think you can drag back some rabbits, maybe even a dog, with more careful steps. Also, from a big picture, you have a strong advantage in the east, so consider attacking f6. As you decided, (and if you aren't going to attack f6) I agree that your camel's first priority was to go after the silver horse, and could have crossed sooner.
35g, 37g, 48g you pull a piece that can just step back. (Even 42g...) I assume this was for lack of a better plan at the time.
45g Mc4w ha4s Mb4w Dd4w ? I'd be very tempted to trade horses, it makes your extra rabbits more important. For the actual 45g, maybe push the cat north, keeping pieces as far west as possible for you to attack goal. Putting it on the trap gives silver an extra defender at f6 with just 1 step.
I don't consider your camel sacrifice as racing. If an opponent is concentrating on protecting pieces and threatening yours, often that leaves a route to goal open. You have a very clear path on the east wing, starting far ahead of when you actually went for it. It looked like a very safe goal attack, it was probably forced after Marwin took the camel.
I hope there are some constructive ideas for you here.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 1st, 2010, 4:47pm by Nombril » |
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clojure
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Re: clojure vs. Marwin_2010CC (156064)
« Reply #2 on: Oct 1st, 2010, 5:21pm » |
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Nice feedback, thanks 
It was good that I didn't know someone was watching. It definitely would have made me panic, heh. I suppose "correct" was wrong choice of words about the question of opening. I just meant that was there obvious non-sensical move. But the result indeed was something to be happy with =)
What comes to those pullings with no effect, I'm not sure why I do those. Maybe was testing to see how opponent responds and also bit of tiredness. Good spotting, though. I must prune them away.
I was carefully dragging rabbits as a counter to my previous style: I was too eager to try to force a goal. So maybe next time I find a middle way. I agree that I should have b6'ed as you proposed.
I was tempted to trade horses. But actually I wasn't sure that I wouldn't blunder exchanging so I avoided it.
The goal race seemed sensible but I didn't calculate properly. It felt the right thing to do, but still, it was a bit of "hope playing", which could result in total disaster.
Overall, after getting a lead, I was extra careful to use time to force opponent into a piece structure that would be beneficial to me but maybe a human player could have complicated things with active play and beat easily.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 1st, 2010, 5:22pm by clojure » |
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