7 ms·
This is cool. I solved a simpler game about 15 years ago that my brother and I used to play: an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that
by mark_l_watson 3y ago
This is cool.
I solved a simpler game about 15 years ago that my brother and I used to play: an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that hold stones. I coded up an alpha-beta engine for it, and discovered crazy always win strategies to match how my brother and I played. Suddenly I would win all the games, and then he never wanted to play again. This was a classic match up of a computer scientist vs. an optometrist.
- notfed 3y agoClassic "Why nerds don't get invited to parties"!
- roughly 3y ago> computer scientist vs an optometrist There’s a joke in here about perspective
- rst4455 3y agoI'll byte... C#?
- ornornor 3y agoNice
- elromulous 3y agoThe brother lacked vision
- gkuhl21 3y agoThe optometrist couldn't believe his eyes. ... I'll see myself out.
- bentcorner 3y ago> an African game with about 10 pits on each side of the board that hold stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala if you want more info
- neontomo 3y agoAlso, another version I'm more familiar with from childhood is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalah
- Magi604 3y agoHere is the game I played with my grandma when I was younger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_mancala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_mancala
- sundarurfriend 3y agoReminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallanguzhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallanguzhi And it is indeed mentioned under the Names and Variants section. Seems likely that there's a historical connection somewhere.
- kiviuq 3y ago"The game was played by enslaved Africans to foster community and develop social skills." ..cringe...
- bee_rider 3y agoI don’t get it, what makes you want to cringe?
- earthboundkid 3y agoThey’re humans and humans play games for fun.
- SamBam 3y ago
- probablynish 3y agoI played this game growing up (we called it Bao) - now I know what my next party trick is going to be
- sonofhans 3y agoThat is super cool. I’ve played Mankala for years and would love to hear more. It’s instructive to see old Africans playing Mankala. They play very fast. It can become more like poker, where deceit is a part of the game. If you spam down your stones fast enough sometimes you can skip a bowl, or drop an extra stone, in order to gain advantage. I’m not facile enough to play this way, and I play with family and so don’t cheat. It’s a very different thing, though. Like the difference between British ladies playing slow Mahjong over tea, versus people playing for money in a gambling room in China.
- jonahx 3y ago> They play very fast. It can become more like poker, where deceit is a part of the game. If you spam down your stones fast enough sometimes you can skip a bowl, or drop an extra stone, in order to gain advantage. What you describe is just a talent at cheating, and I assume against the rules of the game. In poker, bluffing is an explicit part of the game allowed by the rules. I wouldn't even call it "deceit" in that context. At the very least, these are highly distinct categories of deceit.
- weatherlight 3y agoSometimes there's an implicit its only cheating if you get caught.
- buzzy_hacker 3y agoYeah, in monopoly you don’t have to pay rent if the property owner doesn’t notice.
- jhbadger 3y agoAnd in Scrabble it's fine to use a nonsense word if nobody challenges it.
- _justinfunk 3y ago
- CyberDildonics 3y agoMancala and connect four are classic examples of solved games. computer scientist vs. an optometrist. What does being an optometrist have to do with anything?
- coffee_ 3y agoOne solves problems and the other is a computer scientist.
- rendall 3y agoWell as a computer scientist and programmer, I for one laughed.
- libraryatnight 3y agoWasted his time learning to help people see, now he can't even kick ass at Mancala! The rube!
- hombre_fatal 3y agoIt’s a lowly profession for those less cunning, scarcely worthy of mention alongside the intellectual ballet that is the domain of software and computers.
- easton 3y agoIt’s a joke. As in “CS vs Optometry, who will win in the mancala battle of the century?!”
- Keyframe 3y agoUnless it turns out OP is an optometrist
- CyberDildonics 3y agoWhat exactly is the joke?
- elwell 3y ago
- qubex 3y agoI did something similar for my (then) favourite game Pentago, with similar results: I drained all the fun from it.
- jmholla 3y agoThis is usually my approach when I'm playing too much of a game. I cracked my sudoku addiction by writing a solver. Got a lot less fun when I could tell my computer to solve it how I would solve it.
- dbrueck 3y agoHaha, I did this for Wordle - same result!
- marssaxman 3y agoI carefully refrained from building an actual word-ladder solver, for that reason - instead I have a little dictionary-explorer script which will show me the next two layers of the tree, should I get stuck.
- bertil 3y ago[flagged]
- grensley 3y agoI can't remember the source for it (help me out if you know it), but people only like to play games when they're in the band of 30-70% winrate. Win too much or too little, and they'll stop enjoying playing the game.
- idontpost 3y ago[dead]
- passion__desire 3y agoIf your team always wins, there is no point in supporting it, no thrill. Everything in moderation, even winnings.
- sdwr 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH10TsgozG8&t=26s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH10TsgozG8&t=26s
- rocqua 3y agoIs it really symmetric? I imagine generally the upper limit on always winning is higher. As in, usually the person consistently losing wants to stop playing before the player consistently winning.
- bmacho 3y agoAlso if you have time to play multiple rounds, then with a handicap you can set that you both have 50-50% chance to win, thus making the game really good, with adrenaline, the possibility to do your best for an extended period of time, and the reward for that.
- jholloway7 3y agoNow that you mention it, this might be why my family stopped playing Rack-O with me
- djak250 3y agoSounds like he could "see" when he's been defeated.
- password4321 3y agohttps://sheabunge.github.io/mancala/ https://sheabunge.github.io/mancala/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]