Any 150-move draws which should not have been draws? Gomoku, Connect6

10 replies. Last post: 2009-01-08

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Any 150-move draws which should not have been draws?
  • David J Bush ★ at 2005-10-03

    Gomoku here does not use the standard rules. That's a good thing, actually, since the standard rules give a huge advantage to the first player. The recent increase in the size of the restricted region should make the game even more balanced. Another rule difference is with regards to “overlines.” An overline is six or more stones of the same color in a contiguous straight line. This can happen if the last stone placed is one of the middle stones. In standard Gomoku, an overline is legal, but it does not win. It's much simpler to say that five or more stones in a row wins.

    The last rule difference concerns draws. If 150 moves are played without a win, the server declares the game a draw. Presumably this is to keep one player (or both players) from dragging the game on long past all wins are blocked. But is this always the case? Have any games reached 150 moves while there was still a chance for one or both sides to win?

    Thanks for your help!

  • Tasmanian Devil at 2005-10-03

    Certainly. This was one of the points in this discussion.

  • Marius Halsor at 2005-10-03

    Read the post “unfair, ungentlemanly play”, David. This was discussed in some depth there.

  • David J Bush ★ at 2005-10-03

    Yeesh, what a flame fest. Thanks for telling me about it. I hope the flames don't spread over here. Rather than engage in an argument, I would prefer to discuss what could be done about it, or if anything should be done. In other words, should the rules be changed again, and if so how?

    Is that the only example? There have been well over 10 thousand Twixt games played so far, so I would imagine about the same number of Gomoku games have also been played. A single draw that could have been won out of thousands of games may not be a compelling argument to Richard that he should go to the trouble to change it. After all, in the end it makes no difference what everyone else decides, only what our administrator decides.

    How about 150-move games which should have been draws? Games which Richard could point to and say “See? The rule is helpful.” I wonder how many of those there are? If there are only a handful of them, that gives more credence to the argument that the rule may be too harmful to justify how helpful it is.

    Maybe one answer would be to bump up the move limit. But I would need more data before arriving at a conclusion. Are there any Perl programmers out there? …

  • Tasmanian Devil at 2005-10-04

    There have actually been over 18000 Twixt games and over 38000 Gomoku games - click on the game names at the tournament page.

  • Nevermind at 2005-10-07

    In gomoku the board is 19x19, which makes 361 possible moves. I would argue that half of this 361 should be highest number of moves before the automatic draw kicks in.

    After move 180 there is not much chance you can develop any viable attack. But 150 moves might very well be a bit low for the move limit as the infamous vector-Superman game has testified.

    So I say: move limit in gomoku should be 180.

  • ypercube at 2006-05-07

    Since there is a topic about draws in Connect6 too, now, I'll make a suggestion:

    Instead of automatic draw at move 150 (which is a bit soon for Gomoku and a bit late for Connect6), make available offer for draw after move 150 for Gomoku and after move 100 for Connect6.

    If you keep automatic draw, change the limit to 180 moves for Gomoku.

  • Lucy at 2006-05-07

    For tournaments the offer for draw might be useful as well (like in chess or twixt) as a tactical variant.

  • KPT at 2006-05-08

    i have 2 draws

  • Thomas at 2009-01-08

    Rule suggestion:

    Any player may cancel the 150 moves rule at any time during the game. If the board is filled without any player having a winning row, the player who cancelled the rule loses.

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