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Topic: Hi (Read 1749 times) |
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robinz
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #6110
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Posts: 65
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Hi everyone,
May I just say what a great site you seem to have here! I discovered Arimaa a few days ago while randomly surfing wikipedia, found the link to the wikibook and read through much of it - clearly, never having played a game, most of it was straight over my head, but I must say I was intrigued. So I decided to come here and try playing a few games. I started today, on the bot ladder, and surprised myself by winning most of my games - despite the fact I still keep blundering away important pieces to 1-move captures, it's amazing how may of the bots don't seem to do anything useful with their material advantage and let me strip away their defences on one side of the board and eventually get a rabbit through. I'm guessing that most humans - and the tougher bots - won't be so generous though 
I'm quite interested in "intellectual" games of most sorts - I played chess avidly in my teenage years, but drifted out of it about 8 years ago, never having got back into it since. Bridge took over as my main game interest after I got to university, and I still play that keenly. I also started playing go last year, and find that game fascinating (despite still not being very good). Arimaa looks almost equally fascinating (although totally different, of course), from my first impressions. I like the fact that it's so new that so much remains to be discovered and understood about it - but old enough that there's such a nice online community here.
Anyway, sorry for the stupidly long-winded introductory post. Thanks for the site, and I hope to get to know some of you over the coming months 
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Fritzlein
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #706
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Posts: 5928
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Re: Hi
« Reply #1 on: Jan 28th, 2011, 6:19pm » |
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Hi, Robin. Welcome to Arimaa!
on Jan 28th, 2011, 5:38pm, robinz wrote:| I started today, on the bot ladder, and surprised myself by winning most of my games - despite the fact I still keep blundering[...] |
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Funny you should say that. Just yesterday I played a couple of blitz games against bots after having not played blitz against bots for a long time. I played, in my opinion, absolutely dreadfully, missing easy tactics right and left, as well as making dubious strategic decisions. Amazingly, however, I scored a crushing win in both games. This gave me a new perspective on how hard Arimaa truly is for computers to play well. It's not like we humans have to balance on a knife-edge of perfection to defend the Arimaa Challenge.
Quote:| I'm quite interested in "intellectual" games of most sorts - I played chess avidly in my teenage years, but drifted out of it about 8 years ago, never having got back into it since. Bridge took over as my main game interest after I got to university, and I still play that keenly. I also started playing go last year, and find that game fascinating (despite still not being very good). |
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From a background of chess, bridge, and Go, you should appreciate that Arimaa is a game that admits of study and rewards the student. Yes, you can just play without being methodical about improving your game, and that is fun too, but if you would like hone your skills over the course of months and years, you will find more resources for Arimaa than for most modern games.
Quote:| Arimaa looks almost equally fascinating (although totally different, of course), from my first impressions. I like the fact that it's so new that so much remains to be discovered and understood about it - but old enough that there's such a nice online community here. |
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The niceness of the community traces back to the generosity of Omar Syed. He sets the tone for being friendly and welcoming. It's one of the crazy facts of society that generosity begets generosity; pretty soon everyone is chipping in with orienting newcomers, analyzing games, contributing infrastructure code, organizing tournaments, giving live commentary, creating computer opponents, etc.
To your point that much remains to be discovered and understood about Arimaa, all of us near the top of the rating list will freely admit that we don't really know what is going on, and most of the time the games we play spin out of control. It is truly fascinating to me that I feel so much at sea, but nevertheless trounce the best bots. I am confident that if new and serious gamers continue to take up Arimaa, the top players a decade from now will be far stronger than the top players today.
Quote:| Anyway, sorry for the stupidly long-winded introductory post. Thanks for the site, and I hope to get to know some of you over the coming months |
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Jump on in, the water is fine. I see you are a Brit; Sunday at 14:00 GMT and following would be a great time for you to be in the chat room and listening to the live audio of the World Championship games. In addition to the games and commentary per se, there should be a crowd on hand to answer any questions you may have about Arimaa and arimaa.com, etc.
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robinz
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #6110
Gender:
Posts: 65
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Re: Hi
« Reply #2 on: Jan 29th, 2011, 7:35am » |
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Hi Fritzlein, thanks for the warm welcome 
on Jan 28th, 2011, 6:19pm, Fritzlein wrote:
From a background of chess, bridge, and Go, you should appreciate that Arimaa is a game that admits of study and rewards the student. Yes, you can just play without being methodical about improving your game, and that is fun too, but if you would like hone your skills over the course of months and years, you will find more resources for Arimaa than for most modern games. |
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Yes, I realise that very much. In fact, I'm one of those people who tends to spend more time reading about these games than actually playing them! With Arimaa, of course, there's much less "theory" out there - I'm guessing it's limited to just what's on this forum and in the game commentaries (and that wikibook - am I correct in assuming that you wrote that? Very impressive, if so  )
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Jump on in, the water is fine. I see you are a Brit; Sunday at 14:00 GMT and following would be a great time for you to be in the chat room and listening to the live audio of the World Championship games. In addition to the games and commentary per se, there should be a crowd on hand to answer any questions you may have about Arimaa and arimaa.com, etc. |
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Thanks for that. I may well be out at that time on Sunday, but I'll definitely try to check the game commentaries out at some point. Although at the moment I think the best way to improve will be just to play more games - at least until the point where I can learn to stop just blundering away my camel and horses
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Fritzlein
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #706
Gender:
Posts: 5928
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Re: Hi
« Reply #3 on: Jan 29th, 2011, 9:00am » |
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on Jan 29th, 2011, 7:35am, robinz wrote:| Yes, I realise that very much. In fact, I'm one of those people who tends to spend more time reading about these games than actually playing them! With Arimaa, of course, there's much less "theory" out there - I'm guessing it's limited to just what's on this forum and in the game commentaries (and that wikibook - am I correct in assuming that you wrote that? Very impressive, if so ) |
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The Wikibook was mostly written by me and Greg Magne (username Adanac), but I have moved on and am hoping for other community members to expand/update it. One bit of "theory" you haven't mentioned yet is my print book. Reigning World Champion Jean Daligault (username chessandgo) will also soon publish a book.
Quote:| Although at the moment I think the best way to improve will be just to play more games - at least until the point where I can learn to stop just blundering away my camel and horses |
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Definitely the fastest way to learn is from a combination of studying and playing, as opposed to too much of one and too little of the other. But in any case be sure to have fun!
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| « Last Edit: Jan 29th, 2011, 9:01am by Fritzlein » |
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RonWeasley
Forum Guru
Harry's friend (Arimaa player #441)
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Re: Hi
« Reply #4 on: Jan 29th, 2011, 9:47am » |
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Welcome to another player to eventually kick my butt. You might be interested in the World Championship games you see under "Scheduled Games." You may find the live audio commentary very instructive. Instructions about how to do this are on the site, but you can get help, and meet other spectators, by logging into the Chat during a tournament game.
I hope this turns out to be rewarding for you.
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omar
Forum Guru
Arimaa player #2
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Re: Hi
« Reply #5 on: Jan 29th, 2011, 8:42pm » |
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Hi Robin. Welcome aboard.
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