First move bug? Einstein forum

8 replies. Last post: 2006-03-23

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First move bug?
  • Abigail at 2006-03-11

    In all 19 games I've played so far that have had a first move the first move of the first player involved moving the piece on a1. Of course it could be a coincidence, but the chance on that happening is less than 0.0000000000002%. Pretty small.

    Has anyone played a game where the first move of the first player didn't involve the piece on a1?

  • christopher at 2006-03-11

    All of my 16 games have started with a move from the a1 square. It must be a bug.

  • christopher at 2006-03-11

    I was gonna say perhaps this is part of the lg rules for the game but its interesting that after a point is scored and the board is reset, not all moves have to begin with the a1 square.

  • Theo van der Storm at 2006-03-22

    Yes, It is definitely a bug.

    The rules say you have to throw the die whenever you have more than one stone.

    Theo

  • alain at 2006-03-22

    Hmmm, hadn't noticed it before but all my games have also started with a move from a1 but after the first game and the board is reset, the move looks more random. The software bug is probably to do with the random stone placement - maybe the random-number generator takes the last stone randomly placed and uses that for the first move, Richard?

    BTW, why don't we have a “stone placing” (you place one I place one, etc) phase to this game instead of random stone placement? There *might* be some skill in placing stones in response to what your opponent does.

  • Theo van der Storm at 2006-03-22

    The inventor of the game Ingo Alth?fer also mentioned manual setup to me as an option.

    I'm not in favour of it. As a (former) chess player I don't like opening theory.

    Testing playing skill from a random position is according to me a more pure contest. Secondly random positions bring more variation into the games played, which may already be reason enough for many to prefer random starting positions.

    Moreover, I just thought of a way to get the random effect when playing “over the board”, i.e. with real glass “stones”. Both players put stones in random positions and the die is thrown to determine who plays which side.

    Finally an answer to a question you have not posed:

    Yes I have thought a great deal about this game since February 2005.

  • Abigail at 2006-03-22

    I don't like a phase of setting up your stones. It would add 12 moves to each game - in a five game match, it would add 60 moves. If your opponent lives 12 timezones away, it would add 2 months of playing time per match.

    The quickness of the game is, for me, the biggest attraction of Einstein. I'd probably stop playing the game if it's slowed down with a lengthy set up phase.

  • Theo van der Storm at 2006-03-23

    Thanks Abigail. That's settled.

    The game can also be sped up:

    Let the server play obligatory moves along the edge.

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