Topic:
The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
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Aug 29, 2020, 1:33 PM
by:
richardiii
The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 6, 2020, 6:59 PM
We used to have virag from Hungary playing here, nosovs from Russia, blaxxx from Poland (among many other Polish players). No offense to spavacz and pente_gon, but I think they are the only remaining top level players who aren't in the US. Can this be remedied? There are a number of high level swap gomoku and renju players who have great swap Pente records. It's challenging to visualize Pente being included in next year's mind sports Olympiad without a significantly higher international interest in the game than is currently showing up on my radar. Any ideas?
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 6, 2020, 7:34 PM
nupukorda user 77820 Estonia AKA qaismodo user 6443? matu97 - user 1116 Estonia allever - user 765 Estonia kuakua - user 5093 Estonia ikla - user 37944 Estonia est - user 12267 Estonia ants - user 733 Estonia tennispall - user 17199 Estonia argo - user 12658 Estonia G00GLE - user 23758 Estonia vessago - user 7538 Hungary
Players like: sandersonia - user 75998 Japan and zukole - user 13368 Poland would definitely be contenders by next year if they were interested in playing and started now.
If they play or decide to start playing Pente, then based on their gomoku ratings these players would also be good contenders from playok.com: ok366 from Latvia, nincseselyem, peking2008, dibarius and lazlozoltan from Hungary, mbezoli and alexissanchez from the UK, kedlub and gregi from the Czech Republic adifek, aralen, gomokupl and nkm1519g from Poland and kampl from Slovenia and vittaly from Estonia also: nkm1519, tycka, undothefuture, doder11, illusion9, jimmyhendrix, nomenestomen, connect555, gerdi20, literakuss, g0ldeneagle, truskawekk3, xxvengeancexx, tss9948g, klubkwidzyn and cuartodebano (unsure of countries)
from piskvorky.net/ users/8/30/peroxid Czech Republic users/1061/30/czpaymirek Czech Republic users/1743/30/outzoli users/51/30/eskon
Message was edited by: watsu at Aug 13, 2020, 2:40 PM ETA a few times to add more names and fwiw here's a playok.com account of a program evacoregen5. Close to 50 names here now; even with a bit of overlap (I don't think there's much) and a 1/5 rate of interest, that's still 8-10 players who should be high caliber by next year. If interested, of course.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 7, 2020, 1:06 AM
I know I've generalized a bit above, rainwolf is in the top 10, probably underrated in TB and would do particularly well in a speed tournament. Salixbaby is new and has probably not peaked yet. Gamo467 hadn't played much here until recently and will likely continue to go up in rating for awhile. Nonetheless, we have a ways to go to get back to close to the high level of international play we used to see represented here.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
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Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 12:55 AM
Shut down data base, and make the site able to translate into other languages. Then advertise it to other countries. Perhaps mail fliers to chess clubs around the world. I dunno.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 1:40 AM
Thanks for those ideas, Zoey. I think chess clubs have good potential. I wish renju and gomoku gatherings had the same enthusiasm for Pente, but many of the best players of those games don't seem very interested in Pente. Though, there used to be quite the contigent of Russian and other renju players in the game in the old days.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Posts:
2,237
Registered:
Mar 4, 2007
From:
San Francisco
Age:
45 Home page
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 4:55 AM
Well, advertising to bring in young blood. And, block certain collection of key games which essentially solve pente in a sense. The data base has dried up the pond. Is why no big fish here. As to blaxxx, aka Dien. He is not alive. Passed away. Nosovs, is retired enjoying golden years, he's contributed enough here. Virag I never met, so don't know why he left. I'm sure others know why. Who knew him. Time, is a precious commodity. And, if people have kids, or become an entrepreneur, pente might no longer fit in for some. Also, as it becomes difficult to find lines, the luster begins to tarnish.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Posts:
2,237
Registered:
Mar 4, 2007
From:
San Francisco
Age:
45 Home page
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 5:00 AM
New idea. With data base. Divide games into tiers. Of importance. And have players earn higher tiers by climbing ratings. To access better and better games in data base. And very best games, only top 3 can see.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 8:13 AM
My idea: With database; promote the idea of including 15x15 swap 2 Pente as an event in next year's mind sports Olympiad. I've been having a conversation with vessago above about swap 2 Pente; he is friends with virag. I'm going to offer my knowledge of Pente resources and players to various high level swap 2 gomoku, swap 2 Pente and renju players, including the current swap 2 gomoku world champion. Let them know about the database, the strongest active and historical players here and elsewhere, Mark's program, Dweebo's analysis DB tool, etc. Then, if they want to compete, they have a year to train. ETA: Here's my current start on it, feel free to add in: https://www.vint.ee/mod/Forum/read-thread/?forum=183&thread=14823
Message was edited by: watsu at Aug 8, 2020, 10:12 AM
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 10:14 AM
Swap2 is good solution.
I think that "tournament rule" should be removed and replace by swap2. Most important disadvantage is that "tournament rule" is sure win for p1 (if play properly).
Simplified evolution of opening rules in gomoku: standard -> pro -> swap -> swap2. Standard and pro was good option for beginning but it is easy to realise that player 1 has win or at least big advantage. Just why "swap" option was invented. It was good solution but there was one important disadvantage. Some openings were really tricky, sharp and unbalanced, lets call it "goat". There was tricky sure win for one side. Quite easy if you know opening but hard to find in live game and many times stronger players lost to much weakers players. Just why one more improvement was made and we have swap2.
Pente should use experience of gomoku and have swap2 rules.
1. It will be easier for gomoku players to adapt. 2. There will be much more openings that right now. 3. It will be possible to have tournaments without playing 2 games between players but only 1 game should be enough. It is usefull especially in live torunaments. 4. It will be a breath of fresh air for all pente players. New positions, more importance of skills than knowledge of theory
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 8, 2020, 1:43 PM
I agree with pente_gon's assessment and will add one more item to his list: 5. No player (to the best of my knowledge) has a large advantage of experience with swap 2 pente at this point.
Vint.ee just recently changed from swap to swap 2 and there have only been (to my knowledge) two swap 2 Pente tournaments held. Madhippo played in both of them, so he can be said to have the most tournament experience with it, probably. Those who play D Pente can probably adapt to swap 2 about as well as those who played swap at vint.ee. Possibly better, since many vint.ee players have knowledge gaps about things like the hammer, though I've been working to change that.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 9, 2020, 5:11 PM
I don't personally recommend replacement, I think it's good for players to learn the games as they've evolved and move to the swap 2 versions when they're ready, which likely some players will never want to do. Swap 2 is mainly for ease and fairness in top level tournament play, I think. There are likely still some renju players who enjoy playing it without swaps, and I think a lot of Pente players feel the same. Swaps aren't my personal favorite, but I think that for tournaments they make the most sense. ETA: I would make swap2 variants change ratings based on single games rather than the tylical set based changes. Like Go. Probably C6 could be done singly as well, but that's another discussion.
Message was edited by: watsu at Aug 9, 2020, 5:27 PM
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: The sad current state of top flight international Pente here
Posted:
Aug 9, 2020, 7:56 PM
Before the foundation of the Renju International Federation (RIF) in Stockholm 1988 discussions where held with the Americans about including Pente among the games of the organisation. Unfortunately those talks never bore fruit.
At the time there where no official US organisation (USPA being dissolved several years before). I think another problem might have been that Pente (unlike Gomuko and Renju) is a registered TM, giving a private company ownership to the game - with veto right towards every change of rules.
