Creating/finding fairly equal swap options for D and DK
Posted:
Nov 7, 2017, 12:43 AM
The topic of offering swap positions has come up in a couple of threads recently and I think it deserves an analysis thread of its own for topics such as:
What might at first glance appear to be a relatively equal position, but turns out to be no good after P1's next couple of moves?
How can the edge and corners of the board be effectively involved in various swap offers?
What are some of the best swap offers you've seen?
How even a position is even enough? Example: I've seen Dmitri King offer variations on K10 L9 N10 N9 to various opponents - which is theoretically a sure P1 win and yet prevail over his opponent as P2 due to his knowledge of the line he has offered.
Perhaps together we can create a bit of an opening book of swap offers.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: Creating/finding fairly equal swap options for D and DK
Posted:
Nov 7, 2017, 2:05 AM
A quick note on D-Pente: (Rainwolf mentioend this before, when he first made the change) Because of the recent ruel change that does not require a white stone on the center K10 square at the start of a D-Pente game, performing a D-Pente search from the standard search screen will not return all the possible results. It will omit the games that had no stone on K10.
I discovered this when attempting to review my D-Pente swaps after reading Watsu's post. My search only showed 19 results, which makes no sense, since the number should be divisible by 2 (I've only played sets, and I have no incomplete sets in progress).
Turns out I actually have 22 total games, so 3 were missing, and I quickly realized I needed to clear the center stone in order to have them show up in a search.
Which brings me o a question (For Rainwolf):
Rainwolf - Is there any way to perform a single search that would return all my results for a particular side? What I mean is, if I type in my name as player 1 and change the game to G-Pente, it will show all my games of G-Pente as player 1, and I can then move my name over to "player 2" and search to display all my games as player 2. Two searches, one for each color.
But for D-Pente, based on what I discovered today and explained above, it seems that I need to perform 4 searches: Two for each color: One with the center stone in place, and one with the center stone absent.
Each search seems to be mutually exclusive of the other, unless I'm doing something wrong. Until recently, I don't think this would have been possible, since every game, including Connect6, starts with a white stone at K10.
Re: Creating/finding fairly equal swap options for D and DK
Posted:
Nov 7, 2017, 7:50 PM
Some recently proposed at first glance equal positions, which once P1 plays turn out not to be so good. The first key in proposing positions appears to be to remember that P1 will have no move restrictions on their third move.
Wedge on the edge? Which side of the board would you prefer in this scenario? Some wedge lines are likely to be interfered with for both P1 and P2. Would you play wedge as P1 here? Would you try something else? If you picked P2 here, which wedge line would you turn this into if P1 played along?
Message was edited by: watsu at Nov 7, 2017 10:29 PM
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Re: Creating/finding fairly equal swap options for D and DK
Posted:
Nov 7, 2017, 10:22 PM
dmitriking: I mentioned the behavior you're describing here. It is not possible to have your search results include K10 out-of-the-box.
I have to change how D-Pente and DK-Pente games are store in the database, and, I have to change each existing D-Pente and DK-Pente in the database to conform the new format (encode that they start from empty boards rather than from a center K10 move).
But is that desirable? The search results will have a heavy bias towards games with K10 as the first move and those results stem from a time where placing the first stone elsewhere was not an option.
I could - keep things the way they are, or, - change things to include all historical games in an empty board search, or, - change how games are stored after the new rule took effect and only show those games in empty board searches.
I'm kind of leaning towards the 3rd option, but that has the complication that the statistics will not include the historical games on an empty board search, but, it will show/include them once you do a K10 search. So if consistency is what you're after, then option 2 seems the better choice.
Re: Creating/finding fairly equal swap options for D and DK
Posted:
Nov 8, 2017, 1:19 AM
> I have to change how D-Pente and DK-Pente games are > store in the database, and, I have to change each > existing D-Pente and DK-Pente in the database to > conform the new format (encode that they start from > empty boards rather than from a center K10 move).
> But is that desirable?
I'm not sure whether it's desirable to do that, but even if it were, that sounds like countless hours of work. (Changing each existing game of D-Pente and D-Keryo-Pente in the DB). Does that have to be done one game at a time, or can it be done with a change in coding that would apply to all existing games?
> I could > - keep things the way they are, or, > - change things to include all historical > games in an empty board search, or, > - change how games are stored after the new rule took > effect and only show those games in empty > board searches.
I like option 2. It allows a search of all historical games between two players by searching the empty board, and it doesn't change the way a K10 search would be displayed either. Seems to me that this method accomplishes the goal, maintains consistency, and doesn't disrupt anything (And seems like it wouldn't be too difficult from a programming standpoint? That's just a guess).
Besides, the main point of a K10 search IS to return all historical records given a fixed set of other search parameters, which works for all situations except swap variants.
But, The K10 search is kind of pointless in swap variants anyway - no game is ever going to have either player facing a decision with a single stone on K10. The decision will first be facing an empty board and trying to decide which swap to set up (in which case, it would be desirable for an empty board search to return all historical records, including games with a stone at K10 as part of the initial swap offer), and then facing a position with 4 stones on it, in which case nothing we do or don't do regarding an empty search or a K10 search will have any effect.
