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Topic: Game lengths increasing? (Read 3710 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Game lengths increasing?
« on: Sep 16th, 2004, 12:02pm » |
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99of9 has suggested that Arimaa games are gradually getting longer as the level of play improves. Since Omar has made the game database available (Thanks Omar!) one can do a quick calculation of average game length for various subsets of the data. It turns out that the average number of moves per game is
26.1 over all 7957 games
31.2 over the most recent 1961 games
34.1 over all 1316 games with both players rated over 1600
36.6 over the most recent 265 games with both players rated over 1600
So clearly the games are getting longer over time, but also it clearly has more to do with the level of play being higher than it does to do with the mere passage of time.
-Karl
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99of9
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Gnobby's creator (player #314)
 
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #1 on: Sep 16th, 2004, 3:21pm » |
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How cool. Good to be proven right too 
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99of9
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Gnobby's creator (player #314)
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #2 on: Sep 18th, 2004, 11:24am » |
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This might give you an idea of how fast players are improving with time:
I've split the years that arimaa has been going into 3 approx equal sections, counted only the games where players had ratings within 100 ratings points of each other, and excluded games ending on time or resignation.
Here are the average game lengths (according to which colour won)
Period 1: [1037000000 - 1057000000]
w: 21.1 (187 games)
b: 21.5 (185 games)
Period 2: [1057000000 - 1077000000]
w: 30.7 (376 games)
b: 29.5 (402 games)
Period 3: [1077000000 - 1097000000]
w: 39.5 (272 games)
b: 37.7 (267 games)
Question: why does it take white longer to win than black? (this gap seems to be getting bigger!)
Note also that contrary to our other discussions, white doesn't appear to be particularly dominant over black in games between fairly equally rated opponents.
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #3 on: Sep 21st, 2004, 4:01pm » |
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Very interesting results. It am curious to see how these will change as time goes on.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #4 on: Sep 24th, 2004, 8:03pm » |
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More notes on game length:
Longest game:
251 moves (game 6956) firsttry loses to Arimaazilla on time. Oddly enough, although they were stuck in circles from about move 80 to 120, and again from about 130 to 205, the game at the end was very much alive, and firsttry had real winning chances.
Longest game decided by rabbit reaching goal:
180 moves (game 6978) firsttry defeats Arimaazilla. Similar to the game above, stuck from move 40 to 90, but Arimaazilla, although behind, breaks the pattern, perhaps to avoid repetition.
Longest game involving a human:
115 moves (game 7983) speedy loses to Fritzlein. I framed a horse on move 28, but I just shuffled pieces until move 38 before I realized I needed to rotate out my camel from being a framer to being active on offense. Then I went and got rabbits methodically. Until move 88 I followed a slow formula, discovered by trial and error in past games, in which I knew speedy would not abandon the framed horse for counter-attack. Often I shuffled pieces to wait for a mistake. When the game broke open, I played poorly, prolonging the conversion of my material advantage.
Longest game involving two humans:
73 moves (game 2868) naveed loses to omar. Defensive play by both sides. Thank goodness for rabbit pulls! Rabbits exchanged on move 35 and again on move 48. Game finally breaks open on move 58 with advantage to omar.
Percentage of bot v. bot games over 80 moves: 2.5%
Percentage of bot v. human games over 80 moves: 0.4%
Percentage of human v. human games over 80 moves: 0%
And while I'm at it, some shortest game statistics:
Shortest rabbit-to-goal victory:
6 moves (game 1627) ShallowBlue loses to naveed
Shortest rabbit-to-goal victory human vs. human:
9 moves (game 1409) Magrathean defeats Greytle
Shortest human-playing-gold defeats Arimaazilla:
10 moves (game 5091) tomcstein
Shortest human-playing-silver defeats Arimaazilla:
11 moves (game 5092) tomcstein
Shortest human-playing-gold defeats Arimaanator:
13 moves (game 3332) omar
Shortest human-playing-silver defeats Arimaanator:
14 moves (game 5092) Belbo
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #5 on: Sep 26th, 2004, 3:24pm » |
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That's interesting. I didn't know that there hasn't been any
human vs human game that has gone ove 80 moves.
If we restrict ourselfs to just the human vs human games
do we still see a pattern of increasing game length ?
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #6 on: Sep 30th, 2004, 10:26am » |
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There are 449 human versus human games in my database of all types, i.e. unrestricted by playing strength, type of termination, or rated/unrated. Of those games
The average length of the of the first 147 games was 19.8
The average length of the of the next 148 games was 24.6
The average length of the of the last 154 games was 32.2
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Fritzlein
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #7 on: Oct 27th, 2004, 11:46pm » |
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Well, there's a new record for the longest human-vs-human game, but only because I am not good at finishing off a game and naveed fought it out to the bitter end. 75 moves in game 8972.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #8 on: Nov 24th, 2004, 10:46pm » |
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This thread deserves a note that the new record for longest game (in terms of number of moves) is game 9842, speedy defeats speedtrap in 316 moves. As far as I know, speedtrap is the only bot so far designed specifically to win by having the higher score, according to formula, at the end of eight hours. Unfortunately for the experiment, Fotland was able to tweak speedy's code midgame to increase aggression and break out of the pattern.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #9 on: Feb 6th, 2005, 11:10pm » |
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A picture should make everything clear. I've calculated a moving average for the length of all games terminating in "g", "m", or "p". I included both rated and unrated games.
The purple line is for all games, and the orange line is for games in which both players were rated over 1700. I started the former out at 20 and the latter at 30, which seemed low to me, but it looks like both actually dipped a bit before rising.
The "over 1700" stat may be a bit misleading as it includes a bunch of games versus speedy, but I still think it is useful to give a general idea of what is going on.
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #11 on: Feb 25th, 2005, 6:50pm » |
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I've been spending most of my Arimaa time on the postal games and haven't read the forum in a few weeks. Looks like there's been a lot of postings. I'll try to catch up this weekend.
I was quite suprised to see that some of the postal games have ended in under 40 moves; even among 1700+ players. I was expecting them to be much longer. It will be interesting to see how the postal games compare to the interactive ones once the tournament is over.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #12 on: Feb 26th, 2005, 1:27pm » |
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on Feb 25th, 2005, 6:50pm, omar wrote:| [...] haven't read the forum in a few weeks. Looks like there's been a lot of postings. |
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I'm excited the that forum seems to have reached a level of activity where it makes sense to check it every day.
on Feb 25th, 2005, 6:50pm, omar wrote:
I was quite suprised to see that some of the postal games have ended in under 40 moves; even among 1700+ players. I was expecting them to be much longer. It will be interesting to see how the postal games compare to the interactive ones once the tournament is over.
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I expect the average game length will be about the same for the postal games as for the interactive games, not shorter, not longer. The results so far are not all that anomalous given that the finished games are the shortest of the crop.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #13 on: Mar 11th, 2005, 4:39pm » |
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To update, there is a new record for human versus bot, game 12432: lightning loses to PMertens in 122 moves.
(It's weird to get a "record" for being bad at finishing off a won position, but then again, my previous record of 115 moves against speedy happened for the same reason. Some day someone will intentionally draw out a game for 500 moves just to get the record...)
Also there is a new record for human versus human (already noted elsewhere), game 11732: robinson loses to Paul in 80 moves.
There was a brief dip in game lengths when attacking play became more popular, but I think we are due for another, further rise as we see attacking games in which at least one wing of the board gets totally clogged up.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 11th, 2005, 4:47pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Posts: 5928
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Re: Game lengths increasing?
« Reply #14 on: Mar 21st, 2005, 1:27pm » |
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Game 13011, Belbo beats Paul in 95 moves, is the new record. It happened in a postal game, but fortunately Paul averaged only 12 hours per move, and Belbo just over 2 hours per move!
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