Twixt (and even more so Twixt PP) can end in draws. But there is no way to offer a draw.
Unless this is fixed, players will have to make ridiculous moves after a draw is inevitable. And after that, unless the system recognizes when no more legal moves are available and automatically ends the game, whoever has no move will lose on time.
I suppose that's another way to avoid draws. As in Amazons, whoever runs out of moves loses. But I don't think that's what's intended and I wouldn't recommend it.
My mistake (unless it was fixed in the last 10 minutes). I don't know how I missed the draw offer box. Maybe I was looking at game where it wasn't my turn.
I have a game with Dvd Avins that shows the disadvantages of not being able to remove the links. It's still fairly early in the game, so I don't know how it will end, but i have pieces that i could connect if i could remove branches, but I cannot easily connect them now, and I'm not sure if I will be able to later. If you're interested in seeing what it looks like, the game number is 38131.
Please note that while I underestimated your position while playing moves 7 and 9, I was adapting my strategy to the current rules when I played moves 11, 13, 15, and 17.
Had the standard rules been in effect, making playing for a draw much less practical, I suspect you would have won. But the game would have gone differently and perhaps I would have won.
In game #38131 black player forgot on rule, that he can cross his own lines ?? I think in this version (paper and pencil, where you can cross own lines) is draw less probable than in standard rules.
I maybe remove possibility for offering draw, because I am able detect if position is necessarily draw.
Ah, now I understand! But crossing your own links affects the rules more deeply than just reducing the incidence of draws. Here is an example position, which is a win under Twixt PP rules, but a loss in standard Twixt.
You say the server will be able to recognize draws? That's amazing, but even so, it might be more user-friendly to allow draw offers anyway, since experienced players may wish to agree to a draw in advance, because they see that a draw is inevitable.
Ricahard, I think updating the rules page is necessary to make the difference clear.
In the rules, you list severa bullet points, including saying which color goes first (which is not in the original rules) and you don't mention the swap rule, which is also an innovation. Then in the last bullet point, you say
Draw circle on vacant space. Draw all possible links (knights move). Your link cannot cross oponent link (This is difference between Twixt board game and Twixt paper and pencil game)
Well, mandatory drawing of all possible links is a differnce. Not being able to remove links (and place them) later is a difference. And the biggest difference, you don't even say explicitly. You say you can't cross opponents' links, but you don't say that you can cross yoru own. In a page like this that is not precise, it's easy to assume that that's an oversight in the language, not an actual difference in the rules.
The swap rule is not an "innovation," it is part and parcel of the original rules to Twixt, as written by the game's author, Alex Randolph. I agree it should be mentioned in the rules here. (Some sets sold in the US mistakenly left this rule out.)
I also agree that the rules here should explicitly say you may cross your own links. I'm still hoping, however, that the standard rules, including link removal, will be implemented here instead.
Regarding mandatory automatic linking to the peg just played, This is technically also a deviation from official Twixt, but one I would be willing to live with for the sake of a simpler GUI. (I discuss a suggested interface scheme, which allows link removal, in the "Twixt is here" thread.) It would never hurt your position to add all possible links to the peg just played, as long as links may be removed later.
I agree about the automatic placement of links. I was just showing that the language on the page wasn't very exact, in support of my point that when what's said is almost as imprecise as my typing, Richard shouldn't rely on us to make correct inferences from what he does say.
I didn't realize the pie rule was orginal. I guess the school set I learned on almost 30 years ago was among those that left it out. If either of the sets I've owned since do state it, I never noticed.
On another topic, (but likely of interest to the same poeple who are reading this thread) I just downloaded and ran Jtiwxt. Thank you for this tool. But I can't figure out how to open the library. Is it in the documentation somehwere? It doesn't seem to be one of the supported file types (but I'm probably missing something obvious).
Kevin Walker, the author of JTwixt, is the one to thank. For those interested, Jtwixt is a game analysis tool for Twixt. You can store games, including as many branching variations as you wish. If you label the "leaf nodes" of the tree of variations as win, loss, advantage, disadvantage, or draw, Jtwixt will automatically label all the parent nodes of these leaves correspondingly. It doesn't know the rules of the game, but is useful to remember variations you worked out when your turn comes around again. Written in Java, it should work on any machine with a Java Runtime Environment. You can download JTwixt here and you can get a JRE (also free) here.
Regarding the file twixt_lib_1.tgt, when you are running Jtwixt, just click on File->Open and select twixt_lib_1.tgt to open. When you do this, a 24x24 board with lots of triangle symbols in the upper left quadrant, should appear. The .tgt extension stands for Twixt game tree. click on any triangle to examine variations stemming from that initial move. Please message or email me if you have any difficulty.
I would also like to mention that it is possible to play Twixt in realtime, if you have the software " Zillions of Games."
Little Golem