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JigglyPuff
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It's all about the E
« on: Aug 21st, 2009, 10:51pm » |
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After playing chess for nearly 20 years, I was introduced to Arimaa by a friend because I was complaining that chess had been played out creatively. I was running into too many people at the club level who memorized openings 20 moves deep... and I wanted something which was new and rewarded creative instincts.
Arimaa seems to be that. I'm very happy with a lot of aspects of the game... it has simple concepts, it allows for personal styles and has the potential to be very deep, both strategically and tactically, I think.
But I've got one big problem, which I'm worried may be a deal-breaker for me, and I need someone to talk me down. It's the elephant.
Everything in the game revolves around the elephant. Basic tactics like the camel hostage are all about where the elephants are. Trap control is all about which one the elephant's at. Blockades, again... all about the elephant. Frames? Cool until the elephant shows up. Races? Yup, the elephant again.
Coming from a chess background, having the whole game center around one piece is a little uncomfortable. In that game, I could play my favorite openings, sometimes with very little participation from the queen. Most often it would be about minor pieces working together to succeed, and the most powerful piece there could be captured by the most lowly piece, given the right circumstances. There are even openings centered around the sole idea of harassing the queen.
I understand I'm very new to the game, and some of the deeper strategies elude me. But while studying the game, I've tried to look through games to see if I'm off-base, and unfortunately even games between top players seem to revolve around the elephant, though to a slightly lessened extent.
So what am I asking? I'm really asking to be talked off the ledge. I'm on the verge of embracing this game, and playing it and studying it as I did chess for so many years, but I can't get around one piece, which cannot be removed (except by gross blunder), which cannot be harassed, so dominating the field. In chess, all of the pieces seem to work cooperatively, but here, there seems to be very little cooperation between pieces. Instead, everyone runs in fear of the elephant.
How does everyone else feel about the power of the big E? Is it just that tactics and strategy for the game is in its infancy, and won't be discovered until later, like the blockade and pin in chess? Or will the elephant always dominate the landscape to the point where strategy that doesn't involve the elephant will be pointless?
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Hirocon
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #1 on: Aug 21st, 2009, 11:29pm » |
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on Aug 21st, 2009, 10:51pm, JigglyPuff wrote:| Coming from a chess background, having the whole game center around one piece is a little uncomfortable. |
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*coughkingcough*
But seriously, neither elephant can be everywhere at once, and the other pieces are vital. I'd be interested to see a match where one side has an elephant and eight rabbits, and the other side has everything except the elephant. Most material evaluators here seem to predict a huge advantage for the player with everything except the elephant.
Edit: thinking about this more, the side with E+8R would have no chance. The elephant just wouldn't be able to defend all the traps at once, and the rabbits would get picked off very quickly.
Edit 2: Whether it's "all about the elephant" or not, Arimaa is a fantastic game and you should give it a closer look.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 21st, 2009, 11:38pm by Hirocon » |
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Adanac
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #2 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 8:06am » |
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That’s an interesting point that you raise. Indeed, the opening phase of Arimaa is very Elephant-centric and the smaller pieces don’t usually become actively involved until much later. But you’ll find that Elephants become relatively less powerful as the board becomes more complicated. Arimaa is my favourite strategy game of all-time and my appreciation has grown deeper as I learned more subtleties about the game. However, the one aspect of the game that doesn’t satisfy my personal taste is the opening phase (I much prefer the crazy tactics of the middlegame over the quiet subtleties of the opening). I find Arimaa openings a bit passive compared to Chess, and they do revolve entirely around the position of the elephants, but at least there’s no memorization required 
After the smaller pieces become more active and rabbits start to advance and multiple traps are contested by Horses & Camels then you’ll see where Arimaa really shines. And if the board gets really depleted and both sides have advanced rabbits then Arimaa becomes wildly tense & exciting. Unlike Chess Pawns that blockade each other in small clusters in the endgame, Arimaa Rabbits become incredibly dangerous, especially if there are threats on both sides of the board. By the middlegame, and certainly the endgame, the Elephants become less and less important relative to the other pieces and the advanced rabbits.
This game 71956 is one of my favourite - there were lots of tactical mistakes but there were also creative moves and it was unpredictable & exciting throughout. As always, the elephants dictated the flow of the opening phase but as the game progressed it was the smaller pieces that generated the threats. And, fittingly, the game was decided in the end by the smaller pieces on the east side while the elephants were isolated on the west side. The comeback by UltraWeak is also one of the more spectacular that’s ever occurred in Arimaa.
Incidentally, Blue22 always plays his opening this aggressively. He’s probably the only player that’s never gotten into one of those passive Elephant-only back-and-forth push-and-pull types of openings that often occur. Unfortunately, his relentlessly aggressive style often gets him into hot water early, and that’s why most players settle for the more passive Elephant-only focused openings. But there have been new ideas by the top players in recent years that allow the horses and even the camels to become much more aggressive in the openings without compromising the position.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 22nd, 2009, 8:21am by Adanac » |
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JigglyPuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #3 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 9:54am » |
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"This game 71956 is one of my favourite -" Posted by: Adanac
Actually, after watching that game, it kind of goes to my point.
Even though you used this as an example of wild play with all of the pieces, at a rough guess, without counting, I would say nearly half the moves by the players involved an elephant move at some point. I'm not sure the same could be said about horses or dogs or cats.
Again... I like the game so far. I'm not giving up on it. 
But right now it seems to me that every strategy revolves around what the elephant is doing or is about to do, what trap it controls, how far it is from the action, and how quickly you can get your pieces away from it. And it's not a passive strength, either... elephants seem to be involved in almost every play, from the opening phase, through the middle, and right to the endgame.
One problem I see is that in chess, the pieces as a group are worth more than any other single piece. For example, my two rooks can cause plenty more damage than a queen, under most circumstances.
Are there any games out there that demonstrate how a camel + horse can school an elephant? Or two horses can be more powerful than a camel?
Most of the Arimaa theory I've seen suggests that it's always the strongest free piece that has the advantage, due to the way traps work. Cooperative piece play isn't nearly as important as having the strongest piece, or so it appears.
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JigglyPuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #4 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 10:03am » |
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Hmmm.... Just for kicks I was playing with that material evaluator.
I loaded up a gold elephant, two cats and a rabbit against a silver elephant, camel and a rabbit.
Virtually all of the evaluators see gold as being ahead.
Maybe later tonight when I'm free I'll have to experiment a little.
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omar
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #5 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 10:41am » |
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Hi JigglyPuff; welcome to Arimaa.
You are right that elephants appear quite invincible in Arimaa; especially since they cannot be captured, but in actual play you find that they are not so dominant as to overshadow the importance of other pieces and groups of pieces working together. A strategy based solely on an attacking elephant can be trumpeted by strategies that develop the other pieces and launch a multi-piece attack.
There have been games where my big E felt quite helpless and overwhelmed against a group of weaker pieces working together. In this postal game I thought I was doing pretty well, until blue22 launched a multi-piece attack and overwhelmed my elephant with just a dog and some advanced rabbits:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=51146&s=b
This game also shows another interesting feature of Arimaa. Because the object is to get just one rabbit to goal, the game does not become overly one sided as soon as one player gains a material advantage. This can lead to some very dramatic and suspenseful games which swing back and forth before being decided. For me it makes watching Arimaa games as much fun as playing them
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lightvector
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #6 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 11:31am » |
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Sure the elephant is strong, and more generally, the strongest free piece tends to dominate in Arimaa a lot more consistently than in chess.
I actually think that this stability of piece strength is a benefit to Arimaa. The fact that weaker pieces cannot force the capture of stronger piece, and that equal pieces tend to cancel each other out makes the game somewhat less tactical and more about fighting for long-term positional advantage. This opens up a great deal of strategic depth, and increases the importance of judging a position in more than just material and short term threats, which I find quite is one of Arimaa's greatest strengths.
You might also appreciate this alternate perspective on the game: it is not the case that Arimaa leaves no room for coordinating weaker pieces to overcome stronger ones. Rather, Arimaa is *all about* doing this. By tying down the opponent's stronger pieces with weaker pieces, as with frames, blockades, advanced rabbits, hostages held by pieces other than the elephant, you gain the upper hand on the balance of strength over the rest of the board. The fact that the "stronger pieces" tend to be the elephant doesn't change this fact.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 22nd, 2009, 12:01pm by lightvector » |
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mistre
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #7 on: Aug 22nd, 2009, 7:48pm » |
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Jigglypuff,
Welcome to Arimaa! I am sure that your concern over the Elephant will fade with time. Yes, the E is moved more often than any other piece (it actually would be interested to have a % - but I don't think I have seen that calculated anywhere), but it is far from invincible. I guess you haven't seen a game that incorporated an E-blockade (when an E can't move) as a strategy. It actually can be easy to fall into that trap when you are first learning the game. Against weaker opponents, you can easily win without an E (check out some of the handicap games on the wiki for example).
In the end game, the % of times that you can even move your E will go down because it will either be holding an enemy camel or horse hostage or the board will be so thin that you are forced to move other pieces to block rabbit threats or create some of your own. The key point is that the E can't be everywhere at once. Generally it can help at 1 or 2 traps, but the other side of the board will be wide open for Camel, Horses, and even Dogs to dominate in the later stages of the game. I say give it 50 games and you will be convinced of the nearly unlimited depth of this game. I have played 1200+ games of Arimaa and am still discovering new strategies and techniques just about every game.
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aaaa
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #9 on: Aug 23rd, 2009, 5:08am » |
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There is compelling evidence that a large number of Arimaa players start out overvaluing the quality of pieces relative to their quantity. Perhaps in light of that, it may require a slight leap of faith on the part of the potential neophyte skeptical of the strategic depth of the game due to a hierarchical preconception of it.
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Arimabuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #10 on: Aug 23rd, 2009, 8:14am » |
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on Aug 23rd, 2009, 5:08am, aaaa wrote:| There is compelling evidence that a large number of Arimaa players start out overvaluing the quality of pieces relative to their quantity. Perhaps in light of that, it may require a slight leap of faith on the part of the potential neophyte skeptical of the strategic depth of the game due to a hierarchical preconception of it. |
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Correct me if I am wrong but a "potential neophyte" is someone who's never heard of the game yet, unless you're talking about someone about to embrace the Catholic religion and that would explain the "leap of faith" part.  
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Fritzlein
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #11 on: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:49am » |
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[SATIRE]
on Aug 21st, 2009, 10:51pm, JigglyPuff wrote:| But I've got one big problem, which I'm worried may be a deal-breaker for me, and I need someone to talk me down. It's the elephant. Everything in the game revolves around the elephant. |
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I have a major problem with chess, and before I give up chess entirely, I need someone to talk me off the ledge. You see, chess is all about the king. If you don't take care of king safety, boom, you get checkmated, and the game is over.
Quote:| Coming from a chess background, having the whole game center around one piece is a little uncomfortable. |
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Coming from an Arimaa background, it's a little uncomfortable that I can lose a game of chess just by losing one piece. Sure, in Arimaa I rely heavily on my elephant, but at least I can sacrifice my elephant to force a win if need be, and there are dozens of examples of that happening in the game database.
Quote:| Most of the Arimaa theory I've seen suggests that it's always the strongest free piece that has the advantage, due to the way traps work. Cooperative piece play isn't nearly as important as having the strongest piece, or so it appears. |
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Most of the chess games I have seen show that whichever player's king gets surrounded by enemy pieces just loses, no matter what the rest of their pieces are doing. This just makes chess too simple. Queening a pawn or winning the other guy's rook isn't nearly as important as protecting your own king.
Quote:| Are there any games out there that demonstrate how a camel + horse can school an elephant? |
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I have watched hundreds of chess games, and I haven't seen even one example of where a player can sacrifice his king to win the game. Heck, in one game I played the other guy let me take his queen and a rook for my king, and I still lost! Can anyone show how chess isn't horrendously flawed in this way?
[/SATIRE]
JigglyPuff, I'm glad you are interested in exploring Arimaa as a game that isn't creatively played out. I appreciate your concern about the strength of the elephant, but I think you have miscast the problem. It is very important to Arimaa strategy to understand that the elephant is dominant, but that isn't all you need to know. Arimaa would indeed be broken if you jumped to be a 2000-level player the instant you had the elephant-dominance insight, but that doesn't happen. It isn't enough. You have realized something crucial, yet an infinite learning curve still awaits you.
You implicitly expressed exactly why chess is a great game:
Quote:| After playing chess for nearly 20 years [...] |
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Chess is awesome because you can play and play and play and it doesn't get old. You have the insight that your king must be kept safe at all costs, but you aren't done learning. You realize that you shouldn't put pieces where they can be taken in one turn, but you aren't done learning. You discover forks, pins, skewers, and discovered checks, but you aren't done learning. You appreciate the importance of mobilizing your pieces and controlling the center, but you aren't done learning, and so on and so forth. You are never done learning about chess, which is why we will still play it centuries after its invention.
Arimaa is excellent for the same reason that chess is excellent. You can't bust it with a single insight. In spite of a large and growing communal knowledge about Arimaa, we don't all play the same way. There remains a rich variety of styles and strategies to keep the experience interesting and necessitate further learning.
I hope you interested enough in Arimaa to start exploring those strategies. If you do explore Arimaa, I am confident that the power of the elephant won't make you bored with the game.
Oh, and one minor point to wrap up:
Quote:| For example, my two rooks can cause plenty more damage than a queen, under most circumstances. [...] Can two horses can be more powerful than a camel? |
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As the first trade of the game, two horses are more powerful than a camel by somewhat more than two rooks are more powerful than a queen, although positional considerations can tip the balance in Arimaa as well as chess.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 25th, 2009, 9:09am by Fritzlein » |
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JigglyPuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #12 on: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:27pm » |
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I appreciate everyone's input over the past couple of days. I see that there are players who are passionate about the game and are willing to take the time to talk me down off the ledge.
I think that's cool and I wanted to thank everyone for their kind replies.
I downloaded a little Arimaa game so I could play on my laptop while at work, and I've read up a little and plan on ordering the Begining Arimaa book to see what else I can learn.
I'm also happy to see that folks that have been playing a long while find that the pieces work synergistically together, but, without trying to argue, I still have the same feeling I had initially.
Everything seems to revolve around the elephant.
I appreciate omar's link to his game, and I watched it in full... and it was indeed a good game. But then I went back and counted the number of times the elephant participated in a move.
Out of roughly a hundred moves between the two sides, the elephant moved at least once in 47 of them. Nearly half of all moves involved the elephant.
Now, I didn't keep track of how many squares an elephant moved during each of the four-segment turns, but I would guess that this number would be very high, as well. And toward the endgame, it tailed off a little, but was still involved.
And that's where I'm a little uncertain about the game. Any strategy game that has one piece on the board shuffling to and fro in 47 out of 100 moves may be a little out of balance.
Fritzlein presents his reasoning about the importance of the king in chess, but any player who finds their king is participating in anywhere near as many moves is going to be in lots of trouble. The same goes for the queen. I think what has made chess such a durable game is that synergism between the pieces... big or small, they all play their part. No piece needs to be touched nearly as much as the elephant does.
Now, not for a moment am I saying this makes Arimaa a bad game. I find it fascinating, and I'm kind of hooked on it now. And I'm certainly not trying to argue and convince anyone I'm right.
But right now I'm at that stage where I would like to make Arimaa my chess substitute for the next 20 years... only I'm reluctant to grab that elephant every other move. 
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The_Jeh
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #13 on: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:33pm » |
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on Aug 25th, 2009, 8:27pm, JigglyPuff wrote:
But right now I'm at that stage where I would like to make Arimaa my chess substitute for the next 20 years... only I'm reluctant to grab that elephant every other move. |
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The elephant is like that little ball in a can of spray paint. It keeps the game fluid. But you don't have to take my or anyone's word for it, nor do I think it is best that you do. Play the game for a few months - you won't lose anything by doing so. Then make your own judgment as to whether the game feels right. We who have played hundreds and hundreds of times do not fear what you will decide.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:37pm by The_Jeh » |
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JigglyPuff
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Re: It's all about the E
« Reply #14 on: Aug 25th, 2009, 8:36pm » |
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Oh, and I should probably add quickly that even though I'm using chess as a comparison in my posts, I don't expect Arimaa to BE chess.
I love chess for what it is, but as I mentioned in my original post, it's got it's problems.
What I think it does right, though, is piece cooperation, that that's the main reason I continue to use the comparison. I like a lot of things about Arimaa: it's simple but deep, it's fresh, it's open to creativity and experimentation.
But my one concern, for me at least, is a biggie.
47 moves out of a hundred is a lot. I'm having a hard time getting around that.
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