Some players on the site sign up for lots of games and play seemingly random moves and mostly win if their opponent times out. It is really starting to annoy me (although I'm not saying they are doing anything against the rules). What do you think their motivation is? To me, is seems hard to be believe that someone like Bill appearently is really skilled at Reversi (won championship as far as I know) but does basically no effort in most games he plays.
What is going on. Are they Robots or does it give them some pleasure?
I'm spared accumulation because I play only Havannah here. I wondered about Bill, who regularly moves in the games we play, but who doesn't actually seem to play. But wondering about human behaviour is a neverending story. Moving and forgetting about it takes about 30 sec. for a whole game.
Is it possible that he's just a bot? He seems to be expert on those games that he seems to play, e.g. Reversi & chess, but make random moves in all the other games. (Surprisingly he has no rating between 1500 and 1700, while my ratings are mainly in this range since I'm neither expert nor random mover)
That'a very interesting possibility. Then a trick to win go games against him efficiently could be to simply pass. I think he tends to reply with pass and accept whatever score is offered. ;-)
The moves made by white do not appear to be random though. Bill may be involved in a psychology project about how people react if confronted with an opponent that plays legal moves without playing the game :) .
If s/he is a bot he is even unable to play random.
If s/he doesn't have an implemented havannah algorithm he won't ever be able to see what a 'six stone ring' is, which is a crucial first step in recognizing the the threat.
He moves in the same havannah tournament in each of the games in the area of the opponent and it is each time another zone of the board. It looks human to me. If you don't programm the bot to know havannah, why would you bother to move close to an opponent?
My hunches are 1) Bill is a human playing whatever moves a bot says to play in two games an plays essentially randomly in other games and 2) Gerald has Alzheimer's.
I think the idea that Bill plays bot moves in Chess and Reversi seem spot on. I simply wouldn't understand that a player able to finish first in Reversi and play nice chess would have so little understading of other games.
Little Golem