idea for new game style

[Zugswang]

Inetplay.de has a neat thing in tournaments where, when players don't break each other, then they can start playing where the second player tells the first player where to move for the first several moves. Instead of telling him the proper moves, he tells him to make one or more errors. But the second player will also make errors of her own on purpose, in order to allow the first player the chance to win (which he is supposed to have). This makes it much harder for the 1st player to win because it leaves him in an unfamiliar and challenging position that he can't simply recite by memory. Consequently, this leads to a much higher break percentage which allows someone to actually win instead of having scores like 10-10, 20-20 or 40-40 and spending all day.

I think something similar would be good for puissance. But instead of having someone tell you where to move, certain tricky positions should be programmed into the site so that when you're in this mode (which i would call something like "Classic Puzzle" or just "Puzzle") and the positions would be chosen randomly and without repeats. As for which positions the site should put in the opening book, those could be suggested by members. Myself, I could suggest a bunch of these tyeps of strange positions, and I also know others who could provide a bunch more.

Instead of just making the 1st player need to win, it can be expanded to make the 2nd player have to win in an unusual position some games. And some games it can make one player have to earn a draw (most likely this would usually make the 2nd player have to earn the draw, since it's often easy for the 1st player to get a draw if he tries to. But sometimes it's hard for the 1st player to draw and the system could include those positions as well). In this case, if there is a draw, then whichever player was supposed to earn the draw gets the win. He'd also win if he got a win, because it would mean the other player failed to get the draw.

If this gets implemented, I think it would draw a lot of 7x6 players from other sites. Especially the good players they would love this stuff since most of them are already bored of regular 7x6 and need something like this to spice it up.

Does this sound good to you guys? Could the idea be tweaked or added upon?

[Teachme2play]

You mean something like starting mustrum game with 3-move ballot?

[Zugswang]

hm i didn't know mustrum had an option like that. What is 3-move ballot? You tell mustrum where to go for 3 moves?

[Teachme2play]

If you have mustrum (v2.0.4, i suppose) simply press [CRTL]+[ALT]+[N], or select File/start game with 3-move ballot. If not, the thing's like this: mustrum puts 3 counters randomly: two yellows, and one red - of course red is on move (the second player). Sometimes it's similar to normal winning stategy like 4-3-6, or 4-2-2, but very often second player can win, or hold the draw. Real skills are most valuble then, not just good memory like in 7x6 (or 8x7).

[Zugswang]

Yes something like that except the moves won't be totally random. Instead, there will be a database of moves which will be randomly selected each game. So it will filter out a lot of possible moves when picking its move. This way, the positions are more likely to be challenging. There are more easy positions than challenging ones, so to choose completely at random (from all possible moves) would make a lot of games uninteresting.

But i will try that thing in mustrum that would be good practice. Too bad it can't do that for more than 3 moves.

You could also go to Paul Nahay's "Megat tic-tac-toe" site, and choose "computer moves randomly". This could expose you to some new interesting positions. Then if you wanted you could go human vs human in another program, set up that position, then make the computer play against you from there. Or to study the position just go in vianiato, set up the position while letting the bottom of your screen hide the answers, guess what the right moves are, then drag it up so it shows you the answers.

Or you don't need the mega tictactoe you could just use a random number generator of some sort (TI calculator "randint(1,7)", 2 dice, draw from hat, etc.) and whenever you want a move chosen randomly you could pick a number from 1-7. Actually i'm gonna try this now i didn't think of that before hehe.

[Wernight]

New rules, sounds interesting.
Is it some kind of single player puzzle to solve?

PS: Still trying to fix everything on the new server, especially the game server. Sorry for that.

[Zugswang]

Welcome back

I was thinking it would be a 2 player puzzle, but i guess it could be single player also when you play against the bot.

For instance, here's an example of what i was thinking of. In normal mode, you begin the game with an empty board. But in Puzzle mode, you start with some pieces already dropped. Some good positions are:

1) A1 B1
2) E1
Second player's turn, he can win the game.

1) B1 B2
2) E1 F1
First player's turn, he can win.

1) D1 C1
2) F1 A1
3) E1 G1
4) C2 F2
5) C3 C4
First player's turn, he can win.

A draw position:
1) D1 B1
2) E1 F1
3) B2
Second player's turn, he must get a draw (or a win). If there's a draw, it will count as a win for the 2nd player and a draw (nothing) for the 1st player. Next game must be a draw position for the Second player as well; that way the other person has a chance to even the score.

So now you see what I mean. It could be just a couple moves, or it could be several. The game will choose randomly from a database of positions like the ones above.

Maybe in single player Puzzle mode (against a bot), the bot can play perfectly. I'm in contact with the makers of Vianiato and they would probably let you use Vianiato as iPuissance' bot. Or, there is someone else who's making a program and he'd probably let you also. His will even be perfect in multiple board sizes. This isn't important though, just an idea. It would force the human to "solve the puzzle" correctly in order to win.

[Wernight]

[Teachme2play]

And what about the spectating mode? Is it possible for you to set it up someday? I know, you have lot of work about the server, etc. but let's just put my request in the queue

PS. Zugswang, how the hell can I download Vianiato? I tried on 3-4 pages and s**t happened. Allways that "requested page doesn't exist" or something like that. Care to help me?

[Wernight]

About that Vianiato, be careful. I just took a look on Google and some websites on geocity are faking it to propose some virus that even tried to exploit some old bug of Internet Explorer I guess. Just make sure you're using some decent browser up to date (like Firefox 2.0.0.11, Opera...).