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You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 29, 2010, 3:50 AM
My main problem with Pente at this point is that I feel as if I'm playing into my strong opponent's prepared opening lines and am at a distinct disadvantage given the little time that I want to spend on the game. That's funny since twenty plus years ago when I was an elite player my main advantage was my opening preparation. My suggestion is the players place the first five stones as usual but without the tournament rule, and then the second player gets to choose if he would like to continue play or switch sides. This may have been suggested before, but it seems to me to be an easy way to make the game less prone to the opening preparation.
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Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 29, 2010, 7:20 AM
No. Just read the rules though and that is probably part of what I was thinking. I think my variation leads to more random starting positions. In the other form player 1 can set up positions he has studied thoroughly from both sides leaving player 2 with a choice that may give him the advantage but leaves him in unchartered territory that his opponent has fully mapped out already.
Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 29, 2010, 9:20 AM
True, but in your version black can play a good first move, forcing white to play a strong second move, then play T1 as their second move and switch seats after white plays their third. White won't be able to play a bad enough third move to level the playing field after 2 good moves because they already have two good stones down for black to steal.
Maybe make a rule where black's 2nd has to be within a certain distance of their 1st? Like reverse tournament rule?
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
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May 9, 2002
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Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 31, 2010, 4:49 AM
The reason I think D-Pente is so interesting is pretty much because of what you just said Scott. In D-Pente, Player 2 really "should" always win in the same sense that Player 1 "should" always win in (Pro-) Pente. This is because Player 2 gets the opportunity to choose which side he will play from -- assuming he is able to always choose the winning position, he should always win.
But ... player 1 has the opportunity to prepare the opening to be relatively balanced, highly complex, and well studied in advance. This all helps to further balance the game and give even less of an advantage for Player 2 -- not intrinsically, but based on preparation, and so on. In a typical tournament level timed game, such as 20 minutes or 30 minutes, this puts a significant amount of pressure on Player 2 to make the correct decision, and now that player might end up burning half his clock before deciding. So, the rest of the game is now 30 minutes against 15 minutes -- another way to create more balance and reduce the built-in advantage.
However, it does require you to come up with some decent openings in advance, which is not so great "given the little time that you want to spend on the game."
I'm actually very surprised that the variation never really took off among expert players. When both players are playing at a very high level, D-Pente is really a much better game and a lot more fun.
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Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 31, 2010, 6:56 AM
Well in D-Pente being player 1 would be fine with me since preparing would be okay in a situation where you have total control, but being player 2 seems to be much more difficult and is how I feel in regular Pente minus the advantage. I still would like to figure out a way to make it more random and less prepared for player 1 while still giving player 1 the ability to make it as even as possible while staying true to pente and making it as nonconvoluted as possible.
Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Jul 31, 2010, 9:52 PM
I've made a proposal before for random positions where the object is not to beat the player across the board, but rather to outperform other players playing the same side of the board- in a tournament setting. Or, alternatively, in a D Pente tournament each player would get to prepare 1-2 opening positions, they would play one or the other side of those opening against one opponent (and also play against that person's prepared openings), but then they would be playing one or the other side of the rest of the openings brought to the tournament by the other tournament participants against players who hadn't proposed those openings- in this way in most of the games the position would be unfamiliar to both players and therefore a preparatory advantage would be minimized.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
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Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Aug 25, 2010, 6:42 AM
Maybe P1 places first 2 stones. P2 places next 3. P1 chooses sides. Seems like P2 getting to place last 3 stones before P1 chooses gives P2 chance to even out position and P1 setting stage some helps out.
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Re: You Cut, I Choose.
Posted:
Aug 26, 2010, 2:55 AM
This is an interesting idea, but probably not as good as D-Pente imho.
In this proposal, P1 gets to prepare the first two moves in advance, and there doesn't even need to be much thought put into them. Then, P2, while on the clock, now must burn a bunch of clock trying to come up with a way to make the position as even as possible without ever seeing the position before. The result is that the position will likely be less balanced than a fully prepared one and therefore P1 will have a stronger advantage.
In D-Pente, one player can use prep time in advance to create a position that's as balanced as possible and then the other player, who has the advantage of choosing the side, must burn his clock to analyze the position and make the correct decision. Plus, P1 (who prepared the position) has an added benefit of knowing the position in advance and so has the opportunity to study it from both sides in advance -- this will further even out the advantage that the other player gets from having the choice. So, more balanced initial position + more prep time studying it + more clock time to work with during the match vs. the other player having the actual positional advantage ... I think that's as close to fair as you can find without very complex swapping rules.
There are probably a bunch of reasonable swapping ideas that could be tried for Pente (such as having an opportunity to swap two or three different times) which all create for more balanced games than the current Pro-Pente rules. But, one of the reasons for Pente's popularity is the simplicity of the rules. I think a simple swapping rule such as the one occurring in D-Pente is best.
