Posts:
542
Registered:
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From:
Northeast USA
Re: rollie tesh is browsing pente.org?
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 3:13 AM
Very nice, this will be fun.
Well I am all ready to give my response to Game 2, but it seems that zoey and I continue to have miscommunication for some reason so I will wait to see what he posts before I give my next move for that game.
On game three, I'll assume you are saying "Right-Three" and not the actual R3 spot in the new notation, hehe.
I'll let zoey decide how he wants to handle game 3 and I'll need some time to think about game 1. So, for now, I'll just update the boards and next moves will be provided a bit later.
You won't be able to edit boards within my posts, but you can create new boards if you prefer. Not just for these games but if you just want to add illustrations to any of your discussions about certain game positions it's a great way to go.
For boards, hit Enter to start on a new line. Then type the following:
[ board ]g=Pente m=K10,L9,N10[ /board ]
for example, but with no spaces all the way from the first [ to the second ] except for one space between Pente and m. Then hit Enter again to start another new line after the game board code. By the way, I believe the parameters are case sensitive, so g and m are lowercase and Pente is with a capital P. To create game applets that you can scrolled through is similar but I think a few more parameters are often used. Check out that link I posted before to see the exact syntax.
I will update the boards now to reflect your latest moves.
Re: rollie tesh is browsing pente.org?
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 4:01 AM
remove the spaces between the brackets and the words board and /board ... if up2ng had not put them in there in his example, you would not have seen any text at all, just a board.
Message was edited by: watsu at Apr 27, 2010 10:01 PM
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
"... not busted yet", can PENTE be saved forever?
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 4:09 AM
Rollie,
So as the 'father' of a nature, I want to save the child from such a fate anytime in the future. So, were it to be busted, ...
What rule could be invented to keep it eternally fresh? A dice roll perhaps, that randomly pre-places a few stones in a manner that hopefully avoids too easy wins. Then again, good/lucky rolls of the dice often changes the winner of a game from the one with the most skill, to he with the great roll. Does such a randomizer make a game more engaging to the less skilled? OF course it does. So even if a 'dice roll' randomizer-of-the-first-5/6?-moves system did favor the lucky sometimes, so what.
It was a bummer for me as a player when you guys who had the time and discipline to study PENTE left me in the dust. ... I lost a lot of passion for the game when competitive play reguired play that was more prepared than spontaneous.
Gary, there have been numerous attempts over the years to tweak Pente to make it fairer and/or more complex. One way, which doesn't involve randomness is to have one player place 2 stones apiece for each player and have the other player choose which side to play from. This is called D Pente. It opens up the entire board for moves, and is quite fair, actually favoring the person who gets to choose, provided s/he can correctly pick which side has the advantage in the position. However, it takes a great deal of skill to come up with a proposed position which is as close to even as possible, so that the player who doesn't get to choose sides will be happy to play the board from either side. I think most Pente players don't like the idea of randomness introduced into the game; I've proposed a variant which introduces random moves into the game in the forums here, I know others have had similar thoughts as well. Still, none of these "fairer/more complex" variants have gained much actual playing interest in comparison with Pente. So for now at least, I'd say Pente is still alive. I would like to see combinations of different variants played as well; the site owner Dweebo just doesn't have the time to devote to this right now, I think, but a variant such as poof keryo or D boat pente would have more than sufficient complexity to keep people on their toes for several years, I think. Don't worry, we'll find a way to keep your baby alive in some form or other. Thanks for getting the Pente ball rolling! One more thing, before up2ng sees the unedited version of this post- we now play all our rated games on this site in sets of two, which is a way to insure that players who are intrinsically better than their opponent don't lose rating points due to their opponent being able to beat them as first player due to the advantage the first player has... and not all players like this, of course- I've mostly heard complaints from a few among the highest rated players; "now my rating can only go up or stay the same". But that's another story...
Message was edited by: watsu at Apr 27, 2010 10:29 PM
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Since Pente strategy has survived this long without a definite win found against all defenses, then it might not be so busted after all.
If it is, however, and you feel that Keryo is too big a change, then these guys seem to like a variation called D-Pente. One player sets up the first two moves for both sides, and then the other player gets to choose which side to play. This forces the original player to set up a balanced opening position.
But if the game were to be exhausted, then neither D-Pente nor a randomized opening will change anything. One player or the other will always have a known forced win. Though I guess that D-Pente could muddy the waters quite a bit if the original player places the first stones in far-flung places. Actually that might work, at least to some degree.
Keryo does change the original game, but it maintains the flavor. Keryo ends up being much deeper and is not likely to ever be exhausted.
Regarding pre-game preparation, this is going to happen in any tournament game, isn't it? The World Chess Championship just started between Anand and Topalov. Both of those guys prepared for 6 months for this match, along with the aid of computers. So long as all players have equal access to information, preparation adds to the depth of the game rather than subtracting.
Pente is still solid enough to withstand preparation -- at least for now
Rollie
__________________________________
I see that watsu described D-Pente already, and better.
Message was edited by: rollietesh at Apr 27, 2010 10:30 PM
Rollie, yes, many proposed D pente openings feature such things as six space apart stones- which one would be highly unlikely to encounter in a regular Pente game. Also, the "playing away" with the third move theory against moves like N8,N6 doesn't work out as well if some winning lines just happen to be prevented by edges and corners
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
watsu, Must the first move go in the center? Are there any other restrictions? Yes, I can see how the game would be much deeper if the first four stones were placed far apart, or in a corner, etc.
I can't imagine how the first player decides to place the stones without it being virtually at random. I guess it would be fun trying to create a position that looks good for one side, but the other side has a trick. The second player might then choose the wrong side? Has anyone pulled this off before?
I can also see a themed-tournament built around the same D-Pente opening position for everyone (pre-arranged). Similar to Contract Bridge.
Posts:
437
Registered:
Jan 23, 2009
From:
north carolina
Age:
48
Re:
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 8:07 AM
WOW! gary gabrel, rollie tesh, and all the modern greats.... where is tom braunlich for the ultimate trifecta? i am truly excited to see this infusion of knowledge to those of us who study and aspire to learn from the the greats of the game. anybody got toms #? that is a table i would like to see...
Posts:
2,233
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Mar 4, 2007
From:
San Francisco
Age:
45 Home page
Re:
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 12:10 PM
hi gary good to see you back.
im a little tiered from work so my brain is sluggish. any how, to up2ng, i didnt say i didn't want to play the opening for sure, i said i was thinking about it, went so far as to say ill ponder it. since up2ng wants to push forward with the opening im hesitant to state what the findings were. but i'll say this, i want to state a couple paths, and ask rollie what would his move be in response. if a certain move, then we can declare him the winner of that path, and if not then we can play it out. i would of course select the path he responds non-optimally to, if any, if none then he wins, unless he chooses a optimal path that happens to have a gambit a little further down to test his pente eyes with. something like that any how. but if rollie or up2ng are opposed to the idea then yes i'll decline that opening, since it wasnt my desired direction, K9 was my vote . i guess its not always easy to do a collaborative on a line, which i find interesting..
to rollie, just because a P1 avoidance style vs the N8 happens to work, does not mean it is more optimal over using a middle ground move in my opinion such as N11 as one of few examples. further more i believe the most optimal 3rd for P1 there was H12, not G8. does G8 win?.....yes. yup, the approaching 3rd is more optimal than the avoidance 3rd,... in my opinion of course. but they are almost the same.. its just that one is less intuitive than the other perhaps, or has a root system with a broader width than the other because of allowing P2 more room to choose. i'll ponder on that.
im still not sure what your definition of solving the game, or the game is busted, means exactly. i think the answer can be yes or it can be no depending on how you define that. i'll further say, there's a huge difference between playing turn based with time to study, and live play with a ticking timer and human psychology at work. Pente was made to be played live in real time. any thing else and you have removed the purity of its beauty in my opinion. i rarely play turn based, but have played over 4,000 live games. i enjoy live play greatly, turn based not so much... there's just something missing there.
i guess im trying to say that, i really hope that when you are between projects, that you come play several live games before coming to a firm judgment on what pente has yet, or not to yield.
with any black first move, white has around 60 choices for its second that all win in perfect play. and countless 3rds there after,... but why does my P2 win 80% of the time then? pente is not about super god like brute forcing computers battling, its about the flawed human minds reaching for perfection, or just having fun.
ok im rambling now hehe...
to whom ever, in game 1, i prefer L7 a slight bit better than L6 for P2's second move...for several reasons. but im sure up2ng has a plan there.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Posts:
2,233
Registered:
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From:
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Age:
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Re:
Posted:
Apr 28, 2010, 6:47 PM
to rollie; just woke up and was re-reading a post of your on page 8 and saw this, "If it is indeed possible for P2 to play so far away from P1, and not immediately lose, then my whole theory is wrong."
i think i had missed that before, when i saw your 3rd, at first i thought P2 had sure win, after further study its not the case, and if then goal was for P2 to win i have failed in my suggestion, unless P1's human err kicks in of course. but if winning is not the goal, if instead having P2 give P1 some level of struggle is the goal the we might have something. tho im a little unclear as to what level of struggle your looking for in order to make your whole theory wrong as you had put it.
ahh ok and now saw this on page 9; "Since Pente strategy has survived this long without a definite win found against all defenses, then it might not be so busted after all."
ah yes. its true that we have not beaten all possible novelties in the data base yet. there are probably more novelties to try then games recorded. but we do know that P1 can defeat any P2 line,..any! so in that regard its busted as far as in theory. but even if the data base did have all answers, in live rated play at pente.org, the data base becomes locked from your IP. so unless you can memorize 1 million plus moves it just dont matter. besides, if a sure win P1 line ever got 100% documented, we could just restrict that path, problem fixed. youll find that even top players don't always share the same P1 path. we all vary, so this means a new game with new possibilities every time you face a different player.
the game is not busted yet! nor will it be for many years to come, but K10 is sure win for P1. there will never ever be a holy grail P2 line that has sure win from move 1. and yes P1 has sure win in the wedge for the record.
Message was edited by: zoeyk at Apr 28, 2010 12:58 PM
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Hi Rollie, In D Pente as implemented on this site, yes the first stone must go in the center.; there are no other restrictions. However, I've also played D Pente where there are no restrictions on where any of the stones must be placed. This in my opinion offers a better approach, since as I mentioned if corners and edges become a factor in a game, lines can become quite different. This gives the position picker a much bigger toolbox to work with in order to find a fair position. In terms of trickery, I suspect things like that have been tried more than a few times over the years. At what levels of player skill and what the results may have been, I'm not sure.
Retired from TB Pente, but still playing live games & exploring variants like D, poof and boat
Posts:
542
Registered:
May 9, 2002
From:
Northeast USA
Re: rollie tesh is browsing pente.org?
Posted:
Apr 29, 2010, 3:57 AM
Hmm, 2 ... L7 is an interesting idea in game #1, I'm not very familiar with that line, I'll have to check that out some time.
But, I'm ready to move forward with game #1 at least, and I'll just go with 3 ... M7.
Zoey, it's still not clear to me from your last post what you want to do with regards to Game #2. I'd be happy to continue on with the game despite the findings in our analysis. I've actually been going back and forth myself between the two best moves we talked about, for different reasons. I'd sort of like to show the original idea because it is very interesting, but I'd also like to choose the line that I think has a better chance of winning. Let me know for sure if you'd rather just focus on your K9 opening and I'll just move forward with game #2.
I'll also look out for your next moves in that Game #3 and update my most recent boards to reflect your moves unless you want to repost that board as you go.