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Topic: Win on Score (Read 5789 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #15 on: Mar 18th, 2015, 12:32pm » |
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I will participate in the discussion in order to try to clarify the reason why I think it is fruitless to have the discussion now, when only games involving bots are ever decided on score.
When we talk about the ideal solution, there are many things we would like to preserve. We would like any imposed result to be the same as if the game were played to a natural conclusion. We don't want games to be decided by who has more free time to outlast the other player (no game time limit), but also don't want it to be decided by who can input moves faster (accelerating to sudden death time controls). We don't want draws, because it raises the specter of agreed draws in positions that aren't stalemates, and makes elimination tournaments awkward to run.
Perhaps we can't have everything we want. In particular, if and when stalemated positions start to crop up with regularity, we might not be able to think of any way to avoid draws that seems natural enough, and therefore we might go about incorporating draws into the rules and into our tournament structure. But it is critically important how stalemated positions come about. It might be that we have no qualms awarding the win to the player who was trying to win, and saddling the player who was just trying not to lose with a loss. It might be that in all practical cases of stalemate, there is a simple score function that matches our intuition of who is more deserving of a win. We might in that case decide that imposing an "unnatural" result can be done in a way that is a lesser evil than the evil of allowing draws.
Some proposals are talking past each other, because they are trying to solve two different problems. If the current score function fails because the game was tending to a natural outcome, and the score picks the wrong winner, the notions of "just keep playing", "accelerate the time control", or "make a more sophisticated score function" come into play. On the other hand, if the current score function fails because neither player can make progress, i.e. because the position is stalemated, then the above solutions don't apply. The natural outcome is a draw, and the relevant question is whether we can think of a way to impose a decisive result that is less bad than allowing draws.
At present it is inevitable that the discussion will run around in circles, because the score function hasn't been relevant in enough human vs. human games to give us the necessary experience. We don't know WHICH problem we are trying to solve, and if it is the stalemate problem that is the true issue, we don't know WHETHER there is a satisfactory way to arbitrarily impose a winner. We don't know the answers now, because we can't know the answers now. We won't know what to do until the problem becomes a real problem instead of being essentially a theoretical problem.
Once we have a real problem on our hands, we will have data to inform the discussion and guide our choice of which solution is the least unsatisfactory.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 18th, 2015, 12:36pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #16 on: Mar 18th, 2015, 12:43pm » |
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Just as an example of how data might change our minds, it might turn out some day that stalemates start cropping up in high-level human games, and we notice that in every single stalemate it is critical that the players have two horses. We might then decide that the best solution is to play tournament games with only one horse on each side! That is to say, we might even be able to solve the problem of the score function in a way that neither imposes draws nor imposes victory on a stalemated position, but which instead restores the current situation of stalemates never happening in practice.
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #17 on: Mar 18th, 2015, 4:02pm » |
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on Mar 18th, 2015, 12:32pm, Fritzlein wrote:| I will participate in the discussion in order to try to clarify the reason why I think it is fruitless to have the discussion now, when only games involving bots are ever decided on score. |
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Is that some careful wording? It allows you to ignore games which were likely negatively influenced by the current rules, such as the game of mine I linked to.
Quote:| When we talk about the ideal solution, there are many things we would like to preserve. We would like any imposed result to be the same as if the game were played to a natural conclusion. We don't want games to be decided by who has more free time to outlast the other player (no game time limit), but also don't want it to be decided by who can input moves faster (accelerating to sudden death time controls). We don't want draws, because it raises the specter of agreed draws in positions that aren't stalemates, and makes elimination tournaments awkward to run. |
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Agreed on all counts, except that "we don't want draws" assumes that we all agree that the downsides of introducing draws outweigh the benefits. I still agree that the reasons listed are among the reasons against introducing draws for the majority of us.
Quote:| But it is critically important how stalemated positions come about. It might be that we have no qualms awarding the win to the player who was trying to win, and saddling the player who was just trying not to lose with a loss. It might be that in all practical cases of stalemate, there is a simple score function that matches our intuition of who is more deserving of a win. We might in that case decide that imposing an "unnatural" result can be done in a way that is a lesser evil than the evil of allowing draws. |
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I personally think (at least at the moment) it is completely unimportant how stalemated positions come about. At least for me, in a true stalemate there is only one type of result which matches my intuition. A stalemated position is inherently equal, and an equal position deserves an equal result.
Quote:| At present it is inevitable that the discussion will run around in circles, because the score function hasn't been relevant in enough human vs. human games to give us the necessary experience. We don't know WHICH problem we are trying to solve, and if it is the stalemate problem that is the true issue, we don't know WHETHER there is a satisfactory way to arbitrarily impose a winner. We don't know the answers now, because we can't know the answers now. We won't know what to do until the problem becomes a real problem instead of being essentially a theoretical problem. |
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I object to this argument. The facts that score influencing a game is a rare occurrence and it is difficult to know what the best answer is makes lessening the problem neither undesirable nor impossible at present.
I have been trying to operate under the assumption that we are trying to solve/lessen BOTH problems. Any solution that lessens either or both problems without worsening the other problem or introducing new ones is strictly better than the current scoring function.
I see no reason why we can not come up with something superior to what we have now, and there is no reason we can't later change to something even better. I think that most of the proposed solutions are superior to the current one; it is only a matter of choosing one and implementing it. I would be okay with choosing something I disagree with if it is better than the current scoring function.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #18 on: Mar 18th, 2015, 6:13pm » |
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on Mar 18th, 2015, 4:02pm, browni3141 wrote:| Is that some careful wording? It allows you to ignore games which were likely negatively influenced by the current rules, such as the game of mine I linked to. |
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The reason I am ignoring the HvH games (about three so far?) that didn't end on score but where stalemate became a real consideration at some point is not that they are irrelevant, but that they are insufficient. I believe I could formulate a score rule that handles all those existing cases properly. Not perfectly, of course, since we have to give up something, but well enough. I would award the win to the side that deserved it more in some sense, because I value the absence of draws in Arimaa, and I am willing to add some inelegance to the rules, assuming it applies only very rarely, to keep all games decisive.
The reason I don't propose such a solution is that I am confident you will criticize it on hypothetical grounds. You would say that my solution would have undesirable consequences in situations which have not arisen yet and may never arise. And how could I respond?
Quote:| Agreed on all counts, except that "we don't want draws" assumes that we all agree that the downsides of introducing draws outweigh the benefits. I still agree that the reasons listed are among the reasons against introducing draws for the majority of us. |
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No, I am certainly not assuming that the disadvantages of introducing draws outweigh the benefits. On the contrary, I am reasonably likely to become an advocate of introducing draws if stalemates become common and no band-aid seems adequate to stop them. All I am assuming is that draws are undesirable, and that undesirability should be balanced against other factors.
Quote:| I personally think (at least at the moment) it is completely unimportant how stalemated positions come about. At least for me, in a true stalemate there is only one type of result which matches my intuition. A stalemated position is inherently equal, and an equal position deserves an equal result. |
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Are you staking out an absolute position here? Namely that any inelegance added to the rules to prevent draws is inherently unacceptable, no matter how minor the inelegance or how seldom it occurs? It seems like you might be doing what you suggested I was doing before, except that you are doing it on the other side of the argument.
Anyway, even if your position is absolute now, there might be reasons to soften your stance. Consider the rule that you can't undo the move that your opponent just made. That rule is inelegant, and it obviously exists only to prevent draws. Without that rule, many positions (I estimate 1% or so) would be naturally stalemated. To be consistent with an absolute position that "a stalemated position is inherently equal, and an equal position deserves an equal result," you would have to insist that we repeal this rule and accept all the draws that occur as a result because a draw is the only result that such games deserve.
Conversely, if you think that having a "no undo" rule is an acceptable price to pay to go from about 1% of games ending in draws down to a nearly undetectable level (less than 0.1%, anyway), then I think you have to entertain the possibility that there might be some additional rule that is an acceptable price to pay for eliminating the few remaining draws that the "no undo" rule didn't catch.
Quote:| I object to this argument. The facts that score influencing a game is a rare occurrence and it is difficult to know what the best answer is makes lessening the problem neither undesirable nor impossible at present. |
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I agree, it is neither undesirable nor impossible to lessen the problem. But the fact that draws are extremely rare makes it very difficult to decide how to fix the problem and also makes the benefit of changing anything negligible. The cost/benefit ratio is too high.
Quote:I have been trying to operate under the assumption that we are trying to solve/lessen BOTH problems. Any solution that lessens either or both problems without worsening the other problem or introducing new ones is strictly better than the current scoring function.
I see no reason why we can not come up with something superior to what we have now, and there is no reason we can't later change to something even better. I think that most of the proposed solutions are superior to the current one; it is only a matter of choosing one and implementing it. I would be okay with choosing something I disagree with if it is better than the current scoring function. |
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Go right ahead and devise a superior score function. I won't stand in your way. I don't oppose changing the scoring function to something better; I merely think it is not worth the effort. (And by the same token, I didn't think it was worth it for Omar to change from the old score rule to the new one, even though I understand his reasons for doing so.)
I will, however, provide vigorous opposition if you argue that we should introduce draws right now. In that case the minuscule benefit would have to be weighed against a very tangible harm of having to change our tournament structure. Not that it is the end of the world to have to deal with draws in our tournaments, but why impose the cost on ourselves with 100% probability when the benefit is so uncertain?
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CraggyCornmeal
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #19 on: Mar 18th, 2015, 10:34pm » |
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Let's try not to let this discussion become contentious. I hate when fascinating debates get tainted by adversarial impulses.
I agree with Fritz that we lack a sufficient sample size of stalemated games to write an optimal replacement for the score rule. But that doesn't make discussing it any less intriguing.
Arimaa is a near-perfect game. The necessity of resolving stalemated games (however rare they may be) is one of its few flaws. And I think the best way to understand something is to analyse its flaws. I don't know about everyone else, but that's why I'm keeping up with this discussion. Yeah, it would be nice to improve the score rule, but dissecting the limits of a great game is what rivets me.
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Are stalemated positions inherently equal? Or can we say that one player is winning, despite the fact they lack an opportunity to capitalize on their advantage?
I'm curious what everyone's intuitions are. Browni and Fritz have touched on this question, but our answer will form the ethical foundation for what kind of score rule we want, so I think it deserves a fuller discussion.
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #20 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 12:26am » |
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on Mar 18th, 2015, 10:34pm, CraggyCornmeal wrote:Let's try not to let this discussion become contentious. I hate when fascinating debates get tainted by adversarial impulses.
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I wouldn't say that's what is happening between me and Fritzlein, although I usually can't tell when I've stepped on his toes until he yells at be for it 
I still view this as more of a rational-minded discussion than a heated argument, and I hope Fritzlein does also.
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #21 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 1:21am » |
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on Mar 18th, 2015, 6:13pm, Fritzlein wrote:
No, I am certainly not assuming that the disadvantages of introducing draws outweigh the benefits. On the contrary, I am reasonably likely to become an advocate of introducing draws if stalemates become common and no band-aid seems adequate to stop them. All I am assuming is that draws are undesirable, and that undesirability should be balanced against other factors. |
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If this occurs we have bigger problems to worry about than draws 
My only concern with draws I personally give any weight to is how they would break our current tournament format. I actually like draws. This isn't very much related to the current discussion, but I would argue that necessarily decisive games have the tiny flaw that the result of perfect play by both sides is a not a draw (the same could be true if draws were possible, but necessarily decisive games make this necessarily true). Even if this never actually happens, I find this feature of a game very aesthetically pleasing. I am likely a minority in this respect, though.
Quote:| Are you staking out an absolute position here? Namely that any inelegance added to the rules to prevent draws is inherently unacceptable, no matter how minor the inelegance or how seldom it occurs? It seems like you might be doing what you suggested I was doing before, except that you are doing it on the other side of the argument. |
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I mean that a non-equal result, be it draw, double loss, etc. for a stalemate is against intuition, and therefore inherently distasteful, but not necessarily unacceptable.
Quote:Anyway, even if your position is absolute now, there might be reasons to soften your stance. Consider the rule that you can't undo the move that your opponent just made. That rule is inelegant, and it obviously exists only to prevent draws. Without that rule, many positions (I estimate 1% or so) would be naturally stalemated. To be consistent with an absolute position that "a stalemated position is inherently equal, and an equal position deserves an equal result," you would have to insist that we repeal this rule and accept all the draws that occur as a result because a draw is the only result that such games deserve.
Conversely, if you think that having a "no undo" rule is an acceptable price to pay to go from about 1% of games ending in draws down to a nearly undetectable level (less than 0.1%, anyway), then I think you have to entertain the possibility that there might be some additional rule that is an acceptable price to pay for eliminating the few remaining draws that the "no undo" rule didn't catch. |
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For what it's worth (hardly anything) I would estimate much lower than 1% of positions would change value with repetition being a draw. Maybe 1% of positions' best moves would change, though.
If I had designed Arimaa, I would have made three-fold repetition a draw by similar reasoning as I would have stalemate positions be considered drawn. However, by now I don't think I would like the game being changed so much. The fact that score affects games a lot less than the current repetition rule makes it score much easier to change without messing too much with the game I love.
Also, this is a pretty minor point, but I view the method by which repetition is handled as somewhat more acceptable than the method by which games exceeding the GTL are handled. Three-fold repetition is an impossibility (at least by the server's implementation of the rules for humans), as opposed to a scenario requiring adjudication. Although still a fairly arbitrary rule modification, it would be interesting if we could similarly make stalemate positions impossible, but this seems practically impossible.
The more I think about it, the more I think I would support changing the rules to make three-fold repetition a draw. I'm not so opinionated on this that I feel the need to actively advocate a rule change, though, for reasons mentioned above.
Quote:| I agree, it is neither undesirable nor impossible to lessen the problem. But the fact that draws are extremely rare makes it very difficult to decide how to fix the problem and also makes the benefit of changing anything negligible. The cost/benefit ratio is too high. |
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Score is insurance. The negative result is very unlikely, but extremely undesirable when it happens without a good insurance policy to protect us. I view the benefit of improving on the score function as significant. If we don't have any insurance the worst case scenario is very bad. I think right now the worst case is not as bad as it would be without the score function, but still bad enough that it deserves attention.
Quote:| I will, however, provide vigorous opposition if you argue that we should introduce draws right now. In that case the minuscule benefit would have to be weighed against a very tangible harm of having to change our tournament structure. Not that it is the end of the world to have to deal with draws in our tournaments, but why impose the cost on ourselves with 100% probability when the benefit is so uncertain? |
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I don't plan on doing that in the near future. The day I do, if I do, I would like to be able to support my argument with a new tournament format already designed.
How do you feel about using double loss, also an "equal result?" I really don't like the fact that perfect or mutually good play could then theoretically result in a double loss, but think I prefer it over the scoring function since is doesn't award a win arbitrarily in a true stalemate position. I also wouldn't really like applying double loss in a non-stalemate position where even an ugly score function is more probably fair.
On a side note, what would happen if a double forfeit occured in the last round with each player having one life remaining prior?
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| « Last Edit: Mar 19th, 2015, 1:23am by browni3141 » |
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Boo
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #22 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 3:51am » |
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Quote:We can't change it just because bots are being exploited. Keep the score rule as it is, its the bots' problem to deal with the rules of the game.
Semi offtopic: I'd rather change the repetition rule to repeat-once |
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deep_blue
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #23 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 10:28am » |
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I disagree with browni's idea of a draw being possible with perfect play. The same discussion also was there when draws were abolished. The result was that it is very likely that perfect play wouldn't end in draw anyway.
I think Craggy's idea with each player having an own "score clock" is interesting and should be considered. So far I don't see a disadvantage compared to the current rule while all others have at least some disadvantage.
I really don't like the idea of a draw. I always found it great that arimaa is a game which never can end in a draw and I don't think we should change it for such unimportant things like Score rule. Also I could imagine theoretically two players agreeing to draw in the WC in the finals when money is at stake.
@semi-off-topic: I would keep three fold repetition since I don't see a reason to change it.
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #24 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 3:04pm » |
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on Mar 19th, 2015, 10:28am, deep_blue wrote:| I disagree with browni's idea of a draw being possible with perfect play. The same discussion also was there when draws were abolished. The result was that it is very likely that perfect play wouldn't end in draw anyway. |
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I think you are misremembering. Maybe you should provide a link to the thread where this was supposedly concluded. IIRC what was happening in practice was poor play ending in a draw, but this has absolutely no bearing on what would happen with perfect play.
Regarding the separate idea of moving to "repeat once," I think this would be a mistake. The current rule allows players to deviate after the repetition, which makes a generally difficult scenario more forgiving.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 19th, 2015, 3:07pm by browni3141 » |
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deep_blue
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #25 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 3:16pm » |
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on Mar 31st, 2009, 11:48am, omar wrote:
This is exactly what I used to think. Ideally I wanted a game to allow for draws but with a very low margin. Arimaa fit this pretty well with the rule that if both sides lose all the rabbits the game is a draw. Draws were possible but pretty rare. However, in practice I was finding that for elimination type tournaments (like the finals of our world championship tournament) I did not want there to be any possibility of draws, because another game has to be played to break the draw and that makes the tournament schedule less predictable. So for tournaments we were already using the rabbit elimination rules to not allow draws.
I was pretty content with this situation because I knew that ideally Arimaa would be a draw, but for tournaments we could make it drawless. Then one day Karl suggested to me that even though Arimaa ideally allows for draws a perfectly played game of Arimaa might always be win for one player or the other. A solved game that fits this is Connect4. It allows for draws and well played games often result in draws, but a perfectly played game is always a win for the first player. So just because a game allows for draws doesn't mean that a perfectly played game will be a draw. I'd never be able to prove that Arimaa is not like Connect4 (without solving it ), so why bother carrying two sets of rules when in practice you want the game to be drawless. That convinced me to make Arimaa a drawless game.
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #26 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 4:51pm » |
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on Mar 19th, 2015, 3:16pm, deep_blue wrote:
Thank you, although this does not support your previous post. No one makes a claim of the likelihood of perfect play resulting in a draw, only remarking that games which allow draws are not necessarily drawn with perfect play, which is what I said a few posts ago
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Fritzlein
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #27 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 5:39pm » |
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on Mar 19th, 2015, 12:26am, browni3141 wrote:| I still view this as more of a rational-minded discussion than a heated argument, and I hope Fritzlein does also. |
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Indeed I do; I'm glad I'm not stepping on your toes so far.
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CraggyCornmeal
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #28 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 6:48pm » |
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Suppose we amend the rules of Tic-tac-toe: if neither player achieves three in a row, the player with the most marks on the board wins.
This would be absurd. Tic-tac-toe needs draws because the game's natural, perfectly played conclusion is a stalemate.
Omar's old post shows that he used to believe Arimaa is like Tic-tac-toe. He wanted draws to be possible because it would be absurd to reward perfect play with a loss when the natural conclusion of Arimaa is a stalemate.
But Connect Four shows that it's not necessarily absurd to issue a loss to a player who has played perfectly. Because the natural conclusion of Connect Four is a victory for the first player.
Thus, it is absurd to reward perfect play with a loss if and only if the game's natural, perfectly played conclusion is a stalemate.
If Arimaa is like Tic-tac-toe, we need draws to be possible. If it's like Connect Four, screw draws.
The problem is that, unlike Tic-tac-toe and Connect Four, we have no solid evidence for what the outcome of a perfectly played game of Arimaa is. Until we learn what kind of game we're dealing with, we should not base our arguments on an assumption that it is one kind or the other. Browni's argument that draws should be possible is premised on an unproven assumption.
We know scarcely anything about perfect Arimaa play. When Omar recognized it might be like Connect Four instead of Tic-tac-toe, he began basing rule changes on what we actually know about the game: how imperfect play unfolds in practice.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 19th, 2015, 6:50pm by CraggyCornmeal » |
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browni3141
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Re: Win on Score
« Reply #29 on: Mar 19th, 2015, 7:51pm » |
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on Mar 19th, 2015, 6:48pm, CraggyCornmeal wrote:Browni's argument that draws should be possible is premised on an unproven assumption.
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This is true, but my argument is of course not completely undermined, as there are other reasons to bring draws in than the result of perfect play.
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