3 ms·

I love both of these games although I'm not particularly good or knowledgeable about either. Just out of curiosity, do you think there are any interesting resol

by palmetieri2000 4y ago

I love both of these games although I'm not particularly good or knowledgeable about either. Just out of curiosity, do you think there are any interesting resolutions to the issues around the balance of who gets to go first? (First-Move Advantage) WARNING: KINDA A RAMBLE, STOP READING HERE IF BORED EASILY. I've also played a lot of Magic the Gathering, which of course has hidden information and a hybrid fixed start. Both players have the same number of cards in their hand and on the field[1], but will almost certainly have different cards to each other even in Deck X vs Deck X mirror match ups. In competitive MtG with a best-of-3 system, there can be a sense felt by the players that the die roll for Game-1-Turn-1 has a disproportionate effect on the match. Despite the roll giving you the choice of first or second turns, it is decidedly unusual for players to win the roll and choose to go second (even though the player who goes first skips their first card draw). For the sake of the argument, if we assume going second definitively has lower chance of victory then the players perceptions can become frustrated and this can effect their desire to replay the game. Because the loser of Game 1 selects who goes first in Game 2, and will likely pick themselves, and the winner of Game 1 is more likely to have won the Game-1-Turn-1 dice roll. We get an outcome in which beating your opponent in Game 1 cascades, because your opponent will choose to go first in the 2nd game and either win returning the turn 1 advantage to you for the tiebreaker G3 or lose and the match concludes. Because Game 1 has disproportionate significance AND is the only game where luck decides who goes first AND is chronologically the the first to occur, I have observed (and felt) a kind of stewing frustration at 'playing out' the rest of some matches after losing the die roll and then having a poor early game 1. I believe a this is mostly concerns players emotions and perceptions about 'inherent' advantages, which is why I've talked about it as a factor of replayability rather than just strategy. [1]In a typical circumstance, some cards or deck types can alter the initial game state of the board or hand.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
chess clock handicaps if one deems it necessary. For chess it isn't really needed. It's most pronounced at the beginner level where certain openings have a high chance of beating an opponent who hasn't learned to counter them. I also like bidding systems. Bid some in game resource for the right to go first. On ties, pick at random. If the game is popular the meta will converge on a fair bid to null out the advantage, and may evolve over time. Twilight Struggle is a great 1v1 board game that settled on this.
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
Go already solves it in a quite elegant way: black pays white 5.5/6.5/7.5 (depending on ruleset) points in komi for the right to go first. The general feeling is that 7.5, the most common American standard, is a little high and gives white an advantage. 5.5 is a little too low, so 6.5 is ideal but not commonly used for a variety of complicated reasons around rulesets and how games are scored. The general feeling of playing white v black is also very different. Since white has free points, you try to play exchanges as evenly as possible, whereas playing as black (for me) has a constant sense of trying to find enough points to win the game. A theoretically perfect even exchange is actually a slight loss for black and a slight gain for white. This also ties into the handicap system extremely well. The higher ranked player lets the lower ranked player place free stones on the board (in predetermined locations), depending on how far apart their ranks are. Generally this leads to fairly even games if the handicap is set correctly.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

chess clock handicaps if one deems it necessary. For chess it isn't really needed. It's most pronounced at the beginner level where certain openings have a high chance of beating an opponent who hasn't learned to counter them. I also like bidding systems. Bid some in game resource for the right to go first. On ties, pick at random. If the game is popular the meta will converge on a fair bid to null out the advantage, and may evolve over time. Twilight Struggle is a great 1v1 board game that settled on this.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

Go already solves it in a quite elegant way: black pays white 5.5/6.5/7.5 (depending on ruleset) points in komi for the right to go first. The general feeling is that 7.5, the most common American standard, is a little high and gives white an advantage. 5.5 is a little too low, so 6.5 is ideal but not commonly used for a variety of complicated reasons around rulesets and how games are scored. The general feeling of playing white v black is also very different. Since white has free points, you try to play exchanges as evenly as possible, whereas playing as black (for me) has a constant sense of trying to find enough points to win the game. A theoretically perfect even exchange is actually a slight loss for black and a slight gain for white. This also ties into the handicap system extremely well. The higher ranked player lets the lower ranked player place free stones on the board (in predetermined locations), depending on how far apart their ranks are. Generally this leads to fairly even games if the handicap is set correctly.