I've noticed that in dots and boxes hardly any of the top players play in anything other then the championships. Players like Michael, Scot, alkosan, danskeg, ypercube, pako, etc. Drakhaan is the only highly ranked player that I have seen that really competes in the monthly cups. I dont see this as much in other games like twixt, hex, and reversi where a large amount of highly ranked players playing agaisnt eachother but in dots it seems more people who sign up for monthly cups are below a 1500 rating rather then above it. I hope it doesnt sound like I'm complaining or anything, people of lives and thats very understandable but it was just a point I wanted to bring up and I apoligize if I spelled anyones name wrong.

The Monthly cup winners are all highly respected Dot's players however.

Yes I agree, going all the way back to the first monthly cup tournaments all the winners have respectable records and ratings. However, what I have noticed recently, if you look at the monthly cups from last may through july, they have been dominated by draakhan with hardly any other top league players participating. I am not trying to take away from draakhan who from what I can see is an excellent player who can definetly hold his own in the first league, however the fact remains that compared to other games, the monthly cups in dots recently speaking, have a definite lack in strong players.

The are few reasons for this situation. The first and probably the main reason for lack of strong players is… lack of strong players. No offence, but if in tournament I've games with players ~1500 ranked, this games are rather boring for me. I've played so many games in may-july because I want to have first place in “Number of wins”. Now I'm playing rather rarely. This way now I prefer playing in championships rather than in MC or RT cause I can have a deathmatch with strong opponents and I can always learn something new. The next reason is playing for points. Perhaps some players are playing all MC and RT until they're high-ranked. After this they stop playing because win with 1500 ranked player gives them 1 point or nothing but loss takes 30 or more points away from them. Another reason can be lack of time. If someone has not too much time he'll prefer playing in games with challenge. So, I think that all reasons are consequence of the first of them.

Those are all good reasons for this but the thing I still just find kinda weird is that this problem doesnt really show up in a lot of the other games on this site. I wonder why that is.

I have not played dots and boxes here, but I think the game looks pretty random to a beginner. Even after they have lost to a strong player, the experience probably still feels very random to them.

Now, in Twixt for example, the stronger player can demolish the weaker player very simply and very quickly, and the looser can see how it happened, in this case, and use these tactics on one of his friends. All feel that the game succeeded as a worthwhile training exercise and the stronger player feels a moral emperative to give back to new players the “soul of the game” that he recieved in the past from other experienced players.

In dots and boxes I think maybe the new players benefit from playing amongst themselves more before the play against stronger players. When they feel ready for it they can entere the championship tournaments.

I think the chain between cause and effect is a lot longer in this game and harder for a new player to perceive.

Your post has given me an idea; write a short introductory strategy guide. What I have in mind is to cover the basics,

maintaining control by double-dealing, the long chain rule,

the preemptive sacrifice, etc. Until you learn at least the long chain rule, you may as well play randomly until all the free moves are gone. What's worse is that you have no real chance of ever discovering the long chain rule simply by playing games. Unless you are one of few who are capable of mathematically analyzing the game, you pretty much have to be told the rule.

This is similar to what happens in Go. You can wander in the wilderness for a life time by your self. You need a more experienced player to talk to you. BIG BROTHER is not always bad :-)