random position Pente tournaments
Posted:
Jul 9, 2008, 4:23 PM
I've had various similar ideas to this in the past (which some of you may have read), but I think this adds at least a little bit to prior versions.
A tournament could be set up as follows: a computer generates 2 moves each for P1 and P2 at random for as many players as are entered into the tournament. Players are designated as either North or South. All Norths are in competition with other Norths, all Souths are in competition with other Souths to see how well they can play from each randomly generated position. Results for each game are evaluated based on # of pairs captured (say 2pts per pair) number of 5s (10 pts) and number of moves it takes for the winning player to complete the game (say, as an example 25- n, where n = number of moves). The losing player would receive points based on the holding out longer, the winner based on finishing expeditiously. For each board, a player would receive a ranking based on how well (in point count) they played that board in comparison to all the other players playing the same board position. If there were 6 players in a tournament, for example, each player would play 6 games against 3 different opponents. For each game played, they would receive a rating score based on their point count from that position; in the case of equal point counts from a position, the two (or more) players who played equivalent games would receive the same score.
Tournament placement would be determined by top overall scores.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: random position Pente tournaments
Posted:
Sep 4, 2008, 5:13 AM
I thought about this a bit more and took into account some players' objections to "awarding points to meaningless extensions".
Here's a possible refinement.
Any player who is the sole player to score a win from a position obviously gets first place on the board. If more than one player wins from a position, pairs are tallied as a tie breaking mechanism. I think this stays fairly close to the sense of how close a game is and to the objectives of Pente.
If pair differences don't resolve all ties for the board, only then would number of moves needed to win in a position come in as a factor.
Also, another possible fine tuning of this idea would be the option of using an odd number of random stones, thus allowing the player with fewer stones to play the first non random move.
One other thought- the first boards could be constructed as follows: 4-5 stones placed randomly on the board
If both players agree that the position offers a reasonable chance for strategic differences to develop, play begins. If one player or the other thinks the board offers little potential, further stones are added up to say 10-14 stones total, at which point the board is either played or tossed out and a second board begun. Tournament time restrictions would probably make the second (or maybe third) board a must play it from some point board. Once one set of players has accepted a board, it becomes one of the games which all pairs of players are matched up on for that tournament.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Posts:
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Registered:
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Age:
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Re: random position Pente tournaments
Posted:
Sep 4, 2008, 2:54 PM
I'm not fully satisfated with this scoring system. Awarding points for captured stones or spent moves doesn't match the spirit of the game: a win is a win and a loss is a loss, neverthless the number of moves or the captured pairs. An alternate proposal:
1) Players are seeded by their rating. 1st v.s. last 2nd v.s. 2nd-to-last ext.
2) A computer generates 2 moves each for P1 and P2. These moves must be done enter the 9x9 area with the centre coinciding with the K10 point (the centre of the board)
3) Starting from this position, six games are played between the two opponents; three as P1 and three as P2. If the result is 3-3, another random position is generated, agreeing with rules explained in 2), and starting from that position is played a set of two games. The winner of the set is the winner of the match. If the set is drawn, another set is played with the same rules until someone wins.
4) Alternately, a set of two games is played. If the set is drawn, the tie-break rules explained in 3) are used.
5) Losers are eliminated from the tournament, which proceeds as a single-elimination tournament.
p.s. I provided the rule 2) with the aim to avoid that the position is too unfair.
Re: random position Pente tournaments
Posted:
Sep 5, 2008, 2:38 AM
I like the idea of having the random moves restricted to the middle of the board, but I question the value of having players play random positions without having them compete against other players playing the same position and evaluating the performances. Simply having random openings would introduce a luck factor into Pente which I think moves the game in an unneccesary direction. I'd drop the random proposition altogether and favor a different option before taking the game into more of a "luck of the draw" realm.
I'm not saying that I'm satisfied with the methods I've proposed for evaluating games, only that if a method could be developed which closely matched players' intuitive sense of how close a game actually was, then random positions would provide an interesting tournament format if players were all playing against others who were playing the same positions while addressing such issues as player one advantage and "lack of strong black openings" (to quote Karl).
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
