Possible bug in Dameo - force majeure not enforced ?

Hi guys,

as far as I can see there is bug in Dameo, see game #2557161, 21st move

Black should have been 'forced' to play 22.E5xG3, shouldn't he ?

@Rio: could you please check ? I do not need to reset game, just to avoid it in the future :-)

Thanks

That's a bug, alright!

Actually, from the rules page:

https://docs.littlegolem.net/games/draughts/#dameo

"Capturing is compulsory. Little Golem allows any legal capturing line in Dameo; it does not filter to maximum captures in the same way as International draughts."

Unless I am misunderstanding something, the littlegolem rules page that William cites is describing a littlegolem-specific variant (i.e. not forcing maximal capture).

Those are not the real rules of Dameo, right? E.g. see the official rules at mindsports.nl :

https://mindsports.nl/index.php/arena/dameo/65-rules
Majority capture takes precedence: if a player has a choice of captures, he must choose the one that results in the largest number of pieces being captured

Yeah; basically, LittleGolem's implementation, while fortunately not buggy, is incorrect. LG's Fendo implementation is the same way presently (the official rule being that only one divided section may contain more than one player piece, but LG allows multiple as long as there's only one section with different-colored pieces). I don't know why in Dameo's case (technical limitation at the time?), but for Fendo I think it was an attempt to 'improve' the rules.

I'm fine with the 'wrong' rules existing, but there should be clearer indication of this, like a clear mention at the top of each game page, as well as labeling it a variant that exists along with one with the real, official rule set.

Regarding Fendo it was indeed improving rules, as in original ones there were cases in which player had no legal move to play.

That's a fair point. Though, it feels to me like it would be less transformative of the strategy dynamic to simply allow passing in cases of no legal moves. I mightd just see it that way because I'm not that good at the game, though, haha; I know Richard did confer with its creator on the change.

FWIW my understanding in Fendo was that the original rule (that a player might have no legal move) was not considered a problem by the game's creator, but rather a good feature that creates more interesting tactical possibilities.

E.g. see https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3152152/article/42966430#42966430

Dieter Stein wrote: "I don't like this modification much. It's not a small modification and it takes out some nice endgame situations. To me it feels right, that blocked pieces without moves (even fence building) are often (or always?) followed by resigning the game."

PS: Imagine "improving" Checkers to remove the cases in which a player has no legal move to play. :)

I see that it gives new possibilities, however in my opinion (probably not intended) new fendo rules create much more interesting dynamics - I have briefly described it in Fendo forum.

Dameo is fixed in 1.33.3 - until now in web version

Thanks Rio ;)