FTA and 2(3) actions on first turn

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(07-10-2012 10:29 PM)yasw Wrote:  With more games being played all the time, I guess we will at some point have some good statistics on whether players who start first wins more often. It is a fact that it happens in chess for white, but for this game it is merely speculation so far.

But couldn't this be adressed without changing the number of wits or something within the game? How about the system just making sure that every player gets a 50/50 distribution, to make the leaderboards comperable.

I am sure there are chess players who enjoy the challenge of playing with black, even against equally matched players. And in chess, the rules are rooted deeply enough that nobody is really looking for a fix (for balance, the best fix might be to let the first player make a move, and then let the second player pick sides).

Chess has a different theoretical problem than Outwitters though. In chess, it is so far impossible to prove that the first player has an advantage or a forced win, because it is not allowed to pass. So, it might be that all first moves are bad for white e.g. because they open up some weakness for the 2nd player (which, from practical evidence, is not true).

In Outwitters, the situation is different. The first player clearly has some advantage, it is just unclear how much it converts to in winning %. If the first player doesn't want to move, he could even save his wits from the first turn for later, and let the 2nd player make the "real" first move. In that sense, the 1st player becomes the real 2nd player, but he has 5 extra wits compared to the current 2nd player.

Probably not the best first move, but a position that is provably better than the one of the current 1st position, the key difference from chess that it is allowed to pass and not do anything, so it is actually provable that the first player can not lose with optimal play (optimal play will be a stalemate because nobody wants to attack, unlikely but possible, or a win for the first player).

Again, with bigger maps, it is not possible that this converts to very much in winning %, and that the skill of the players still matters more (again, compare chess, where a typical game lasts about 40 turns per player) where white gets on average about 0.55 points per game in high-level matches (1 for win, 0.5 for draw and 0 for a loss).

If you want to compare this metric for Outwitters, it is important only to include only fair match-ups, as in any mismatch the better player will "always" win and thus make it look like there is no FTA.