DVONN Random setup

I noticed recently that all of my DVONN games say "Random setup". Does this mean that the placement phase is going to be eliminated? That would be a real shame because the placement phase has just as much strategy and skill involved as the moving phase. I know that I have lost games to more experienced players because of the placement phase, and I have beaten less experienced players this way.

I second that.

I can live with random setup in the infinity tournament (because the games will run shorter), but I would prefer to have the setting phase again in the championship. Or at least the possibility to register for a championship without random setup.

Michael

I do play the champ ship since 2009 and from then until now the champ ship was with a normal set-up.

Now I see that the champ ship Nr. 27 is with a: random set-up.

Now it feels like a lotery, how strong your colour is set-up, when the game starts. In my point of view this really sucks as the strategic element is completely gone now. I cannot imagine that 1 of the other top 10 players or anybody else are ok with this or do see this as an improvement. Therfore I can only speak for myself and will resign all games in the champ ship and will not play anymore when this random dvonn set-up stays as it is right now..

Kind Regards.

MRUNBEATABLE

I concur that the placement phase of Dvonn makes it a better game and that the championship is better that way rather than with the random setup.

On the other hand, the random setup is perfectly good with Tzaar, and I can imagine that a placement phase would be boring.  Tzaar does have a standard starting position as an option, but the random start offers more interest and variety.

Dvonn definitly needs a placement phase, in my opinion.

Next championship will be without random setup.

One idea I'm interested to try is that all games in some competition start with the same non-random set-up. The selected set-up would be chosen from a game between the top two players on the forum - perhaps a game where both of these players feel that their set-up is superior. I've had many games with MRUNBEATABLE where both of us were convinced our set-up was superior. These were interesting setups where MRUNBEATABLE would clump in the centre and I would go for edge-control.

Thanks Richard! If's there's a majority in favour of this now - could we just reset the current tournament?

I would vote for a reset of the shortly started championship games, too.

Michael

I agree with the statements above. Ecxept for the statement that the setup phase in tzaar has no meaning.

The setup phase in both of these games have alot of impact. Although  i think in dvonn this phase has  more impact because its les dynamic.

I plead for a setup phase in both games tzaar and dvonn. And yes restart the tournaments

 Kind regards Mr G

The number of Dvonn players here has dropped unfortunately. I can understand the decision to switch to random set-up for some tournaments in the hope that this will attract more players, since the games will go faster. However, I fully agree that this should not be the case for the Dvonn Championship, nor should it be the case for 2nd rounds for Monthly cups. These games should not have the luck factor in them. I am happy that Richard decided that the next Championship will again have the placement phase. With a bad placement it can be impossible to win certain games. In my opinion, there is no way to place the stones so that you will win the game, but there are many ways how you can place the stones so that it will always result in a loss against a half decent player.

For Tzaar (for now) I am perfectly happy to accept the random placement - so far I have not found a placement strategy that will help win / lose a game - however, this might simply be because I am not very skilled at this game yet.

Xander(n)

The setup phase in Tzaar would take more than twice as many moves as the second phase.  Placement phase strategy, in my opinion, is extremely opaque. Tzaar is one of those very rare games where a random setup actually improves it — and I wasn't quickly won over to this opinion! The other site where turn-based Tzaar is played has astoundingly strong, experienced players.  Tournaments are played with random setup and few games are played with the standard symmetrical setup. There is no option for a setup phase.

+1 for rebooting the current championship (and not using random setup). Also, games appear to be scored even when you resign before making a move? Not nice!

That said, I'd love to see an option for players to vote on a set of random setups and allow random games when both players declare their willingness to play as either side with a given setup.

As a novice DVONN player, I like the option for a random setup. I understand why you wouldn't want it for the tournament, but it's nice to be able to skip the important-but-tedious setup phase for more casual games.

Is the championship theonly way to start games with non-random setup? That would be quite unfortunate, given how long the championship can take to wrap up. In the past I've enjoyed a few unrated random setup games, but I'm not interested in playing rated games or tournaments with half of the game cut out.

Is it possible for members to create user tournaments with the full setup? Are there still enough players around that would be interested in these?

I set up a new tourney: Dvonn 2016 Sep users tournament. Feel free to advertise it!

No option while I did but I think it's the full game. Not 100% sure though. Does anyone remember from previous users' tournament if they had manual setup or not?

Users tournaments are random setup too... URGH. Thanks anyway to ypercube for setting this one up.

It sounds to me like fertile ground for a pair of variants.  Two championships, two monthly cups, option for user tournament and unrated games, etc....

Noticed that this 2009 monthly cup final just started: https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/tournament/tournament.jsp?trnid=dvonn.DEFAULT.mc.2009.final

Assuming this is a tournament with the winners of 2009 monthly cups, it should probably have used a full setup. (Or better yet not started in 2016: 6 out of 9 players are no longer active.)

Does anyone care about retaining the good players at all? Having top-tier games (tournaments, championships, even casual encounters) makes absolutely no sense in Dvonn with a random setup that is as broken (logic-less) as the one currently used.

I have played a great many number of games here and enjoyed being around, but the random setups are just too poor to not give one of the players a major advantage. If there must be random setups, either create separate tournaments for people to join or improve the engine to the point where it doesn't factor as much.

Are the games in the monthly cups still rated if you resign before making a move? mc.2010.final just started (not sure why these are 6 years late), and all games are random :-(

So long and thanks for all the fish?