4 ms·

That’s why there’s the “swap” rule.

JTBooth 5y ago
After which the second player has a guaranteed route to win, but it's much harder to find! Last I checked the game tree was computed up to a 6x7 board, players usually use 13x13
- hanche 5y ago
  I used to play it quite a bit with a friend back in my student days, on a 12×12 board. We were aware, in principle, that the first player had a winning strategy, but in practice, the advantage to the first player was small enough to hardly be detectable (though we did not compile any statistics on it). Perhaps this only serves to reveal that we weren't terribly good at it, though. We weren't aware of the swap rule at the time.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    That's slightly surprising since playing in the middle of the board on your first move is such a large advantage. Beginner players do seem to think that playing near a black side is a good opening, but it's actually one of the weakest, but playing it "quite a bit" I would suspect you would stumble on playing near the middle by accident if nothing else?
    - hanche 5y ago
      Oh, it took us very little time to figure out to start in the middle. It took us more time to figure out what was the most effective response to that. It is hard to remember now, as I haven’t played the game in decades. But most likely, both of us made just enough mistakes, which the other then exploited, that the initial advantaged drowned in the noise of what followed, if you get my drift.
derbOac 5y ago
Yeah we were aware of the swap rule, but it didn't really help our enthusiasm at the time because (1) it seemed then the second player would gain the same advantage, and (2) it seemed to theoretically turn the whole game into one of knowing which opening moves would lead to a guaranteed win, like knowing when to swap, which isn't as interesting. This was awhile ago though, long before AI solutions to Go and Chess, and what we were reading wasn't that detailed. It seems like the game trees are much harder to know a priori than was our impression at the time, at least for sufficiently large boards. It still makes me wonder but maybe is more complex than I thought. Seeing it here on HN has kinda rekindled my interest in it. I will admit in general, these AI approaches to boardgames has kinda changed the way I think about them, from puzzles to think about with a companion to a giant math problem to solve once or so forever for all humankind. It's kinda shifted my interest to the possibility of games where it's harder to develop an AI that could "solve" the game in an algorithmic sense (I was going to say in the sense that there is a program whose probability of winning is equal to or exceeds any other player, but I'm not sure if that's right, because if AI had a 0.5 probability that would be more interesting).

After which the second player has a guaranteed route to win, but it's much harder to find! Last I checked the game tree was computed up to a 6x7 board, players usually use 13x13

hanche 5y ago
I used to play it quite a bit with a friend back in my student days, on a 12×12 board. We were aware, in principle, that the first player had a winning strategy, but in practice, the advantage to the first player was small enough to hardly be detectable (though we did not compile any statistics on it). Perhaps this only serves to reveal that we weren't terribly good at it, though. We weren't aware of the swap rule at the time.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  That's slightly surprising since playing in the middle of the board on your first move is such a large advantage. Beginner players do seem to think that playing near a black side is a good opening, but it's actually one of the weakest, but playing it "quite a bit" I would suspect you would stumble on playing near the middle by accident if nothing else?
  - hanche 5y ago
    Oh, it took us very little time to figure out to start in the middle. It took us more time to figure out what was the most effective response to that. It is hard to remember now, as I haven’t played the game in decades. But most likely, both of us made just enough mistakes, which the other then exploited, that the initial advantaged drowned in the noise of what followed, if you get my drift.

derbOac 5y ago

Yeah we were aware of the swap rule, but it didn't really help our enthusiasm at the time because (1) it seemed then the second player would gain the same advantage, and (2) it seemed to theoretically turn the whole game into one of knowing which opening moves would lead to a guaranteed win, like knowing when to swap, which isn't as interesting. This was awhile ago though, long before AI solutions to Go and Chess, and what we were reading wasn't that detailed. It seems like the game trees are much harder to know a priori than was our impression at the time, at least for sufficiently large boards. It still makes me wonder but maybe is more complex than I thought. Seeing it here on HN has kinda rekindled my interest in it. I will admit in general, these AI approaches to boardgames has kinda changed the way I think about them, from puzzles to think about with a companion to a giant math problem to solve once or so forever for all humankind. It's kinda shifted my interest to the possibility of games where it's harder to develop an AI that could "solve" the game in an algorithmic sense (I was going to say in the sense that there is a program whose probability of winning is equal to or exceeds any other player, but I'm not sure if that's right, because if AI had a 0.5 probability that would be more interesting).