Welcome to John Tromp and Tim Shih Hex, Havannah

23 replies. Last post: 2003-11-19

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Welcome to John Tromp and Tim Shih
  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-11

    I was hoping John was just on vacation, and so he was! Welcome back! Now the top league tourney is much more interesting.

    Herb Doughty has been telling us of his Go-playing friends whom he used to play Hex with. Now I'd like to welcome Tim Shih, a very strong Go player who is currently more interested in Hex! He and I have a 19x19 game going via PBMserv. You can view this game here. (My handle on PBMserv is chmeee.) Tim is accustomed to the 19x19 board, which makes 13x13 look like tic tac toe, almost. Hey Richard, how about adding 19x19? :-)

  • Tim Shih ★ at 2003-11-11

    Hi, you all hex players. Very glad to find such a hex haven here. will do my best to learn from you all. David already chopped me with his sharp ax twice, not a very nice welcome gesture for a new comer, is it?

    Look forward to having a game of 19 x 19 with David.

  • Bill LeBoeuf ★ at 2003-11-11

    Very interesting, watching a 19.19 game. Is that actually and email type server? I notice the board does not say if there has been a swap or not. How does PBMserv handle the swap?

  • Tim Shih ★ at 2003-11-11

    hi, Bill WBJT, yes, it is an e-mail type server. David will know more about it.

    The swap rule is really ingenious to me. Perhaps even Go games should adopt this rule. :)

  • jjjklj at 2003-11-11

    I've just looked at several of your games Tim, and you're style of play is very unique and powerful, I'm sure we will all learn a lot from you. Hopefully we can return the favor, thanks for joining littlegolem

  • Herb Doughty at 2003-11-12

    How wonderful to see Tim and David play Hex on a 19x19 board!

    Now we can really learn.

    I hope Richard will be inspired to enable 19x19 Hex at LittleGolem soon.

  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-12

    I played 1.A3 which Tim did not swap. If he had, he would be blue now instead of green, and the A3 token would have stayed where it is. PBMserv does not record whether swap was used or not, a flaw many players have been lobbying to have fixed. The actual PBMserv website is here. You cannot view any current games on that site. It works entirely by email, and it sends players text-graphics images of the boards. This is not too bad for Hex, but for other games such as Trax it can be mighty confusing. Enter Paul van Wamelen to the rescue! He set up his site to make play on PBMserv much more enjoyable. No more typing in coordinates! You can even make several moves for both sides on his display, to see what the position would look like, before you commit to a move, or even if you are a spectator. PBMserv has a ton of games, and Paul has currently 27 of them available to view. (Trax is not included on Paul's site; a free Trax viewer is available.)

    Paul also happens to have the highest established Hex rating on PBMserv. He is also a very strong Twixt player, one of the few strong players who has not yet played on LG.

    Since this is an ongoing game, and a rated one at that, if there are any questions about specific variations, please wait until it is over before asking or commenting, even if it seems to no longer affect the game. But general comments are probably okay. For example, I'm already not very happy with my position…

  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-12

    Hah! I just noticed, Bill is now a radio station! Do you play golden oldies Bill? Or are you all talk? :-)

  • Tim Shih ★ at 2003-11-12

    hi, Tray, thanks for your kind words. :) My style is unique, maybe. powerful? not too sure. On a serious note, I do apply quite a bit of Go strategies to our hex games. Anyway, both Go and Hex are such beautiful games. Do not know how non-Go players and non-Hex players live their lives.

  • Tim Shih ★ at 2003-11-12

    Hi, Herb, thank you for introducing this website to me. I was like a frog in the bottom of a well, from which I was only able to view vertically the sky above me. Now I am a human being on the ground. Have a nice Californian day. When you have a chance, please lure John Givens here, too.

  • Bill LeBoeuf ★ at 2003-11-12

    SO Tim and Dave, If the swap option on pbmserv were updated to record whether it was invoked or not, would you like the swap option better on pbmserv or as it is on littlegolem?

  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-12

    This is an issue several people feel strongly about, but it makes little difference to me. Whether players swap sides or the first token changes its color and position, it comes out the same. The same issue exists for Twixt and maybe other games also. I can appreciate the programming difficulties that implementing side swap (as opposed to token swap) can present. It's not as easy to do as it might seem.

  • Bill LeBoeuf ★ at 2003-11-12

    And Tim, having seen both ways to handle the swap option, do you have a preference?

  • Rex Moore at 2003-11-12

    Tim said: “The swap rule is really ingenious to me. Perhaps even Go games should adopt this rule. :)”

    ---–

    I thought of the same thing just yesterday! (I'm a slow thinker.) This would eliminate the need for komi, and for trying to figure out which komi is right for different board sizes.

    Alternatively, players could bid for the right to go first. The winning bid becomes the other player's komi.

    Welcome,

    Rex

  • jjjklj at 2003-11-13

    i don't think that's what bill was talking about….what he is asking about is which implementation of the swap rule he likes better….

  • ypercube at 2003-11-13

    I feel that the swap rule is not appropriate for the game of Go. While Hex has only two outcomes (win or lose), Go has two outcomes but these two come from counting stones. So the real outcome can be 0, +1, +2, … or -1, -2, …

    I mean that when the game finishes a player has either a positive or a negative or zero amount of space that is in his territory. This makes it difficult for the swap rule to balance the game. A rule like the one we use here at the Word Game could be far better. Each player should auction for the komi that should be used (including negative ones) before starting playing.

  • Tasmanian Devil at 2003-11-13

    “Both Go and Hex are such beautiful games. I do not know how non-Go players and non-Hex players live their lives.” Tim, may I quote you on that elsewhere? :-)

  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-13

    “I feel that the swap rule is not appropriate for the game of Go. While Hex has only two outcomes (win or lose), Go has two outcomes but these two come from counting stones. So the real outcome can be 0, +1, +2, … or -1, -2, …

    I mean that when the game finishes a player has either a positive or a negative or zero amount of space that is in his territory.”

    Up to here I think I understand what you mean. You are talking about the difference between the two players' scores right?

    “This makes it difficult for the swap rule to balance the game.”

    But I don't see how A implies B here. Why would the scoring system in Go make it difficult for the swap rule to balance the game?

    Perhaps this discussion should be in the Go forum…

  • Tim Shih ★ at 2003-11-13

    Whoa, I feel as if I am a kid in a new candy stores, not only are candies sweet, the sales clerks are friendly, too. :)

    To answer Bill's question, I must admit that last week was

    the first time I heard/saw such a swap rule. So my understanding to your question is very limited.

    Hi, Rex, glad that you and I (perhaps others, too) think the same way. But David is right, perhaps this komi and swap discussions of Go should be conducted in Go forum. very nice to meet you.

    Finally, Tasmanian Devil, be my guest to carry my quote to anywhere in this world. Particularly, to your wife (I assume your gender is male), so that she will let you play more Hex here, and may think twice about her life without Hex (again, I assume that she does not play Hex) :)

    Good day, folks. Let us fight more on boards.

  • Taral at 2003-11-13

    For the swap rule to be able to balance Go, there should be an opening move which leads to jigo with perfect play. It's not obvious that such an opening move exists.

    I read somewhere someone claiming that any move on the first row would lose, while any other move would win.

  • Tasmanian Devil at 2003-11-13

    Thanks. My girlfriend already thinks I play too much board games.

  • David J Bush ★ at 2003-11-19

    I should mention that Tim beat me in that 19x19 game which I gave a link to at the top of this thread. It was a surprisingly close game. I surprised Tim with a sharp attack with 25.J5, but either that was not enough to overcome the positional advantage he had built up, or I made a subsequent mistake somewhere. Maybe I should have played 29.L10 instead of K11. Unlike Little Golem, completed games do not stay forever on Paul's website, but I would be glad to send a Jhex file of the game, with a few variations and comments added, to anyone who asks. I need your email in order to send you the file. My email is twixt@cstone.net

  • Bill LeBoeuf ★ at 2003-11-19

    leboeuf@rcn.com

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