Marshmud: No turn-based game is ever balanced. For every game either moving first or moving second is a better option, and master players will exploit that easily. Even chess is unbalanced in favor of white, and between grandmasters a black player can be quite happy if he gets even a draw.

However, if you check the stats for the other games mentioned (Maharajah, Horde Chess, Battleboat Plus, etc.) you will see that those games are so unbalanced that one side automatically has a huge advantage. It's not that a highly skilled player can exploit a bias in the game, but that the game is heavily loaded against one side regardless of skill or ability.

Marshmud: Concerning spider line4: true about the huge advantage, but the game is complex enough to be fun even as a second player.

Roberto Silva: Those stats don't tell the true story. In Regular stack4 the 2nd player has a huge advantage. In the variants, like spider 4 The player who goes first has the advantage. Such an advantage that a good player will seldom loose.

Roberto Silva: hmm just a feeling .. i like it best to start as player 2, and i think i win more when my opponent has the first move

will have to check my games to be certain

Hrqls:
white 34313 (51.78 %)
black 31472 (47.49 %)

You sure about that?

another example is connect4 : player 2 has a big advantage there as well

Gabriel Almeida: Didn't forget; I've never played it. ;)

Carpe Diem: You forgot one way checkers. Easy win for white. In 3 moves it get a huge advantage...

pedestrian: Great idea!

likewowman2cool: A simple way to take away any bias is Battleboats would be to have 'simultaneous' moves like in Logik: Even though the players take turns, the outcome is only revealed after the second player's move. And the game is drawn if they use the same number of moves to reach the goal.

after the first move the players would move twice each turn.

Carpe Diem: I like your suggestion for battleboats plus. I would love it if they changed it so that for the very first move of the game that player one gets only 2 moves, and then for the rest of the game it is 5 (or fewer of course once ships get sunk) for both players.

likewowman2cool: Haha, funny you would mention Connect6 - I just edited my last post to say that using the same idea as Connect6 does for the first move might help with the Battleboats Plus problem.

Carpe Diem: Ah yes, you are correct. I guess it is just that I am not familiar with those other games so that hadn't occurred to me.

For anyone looking to play a pure skill game that is essentially 50-50 even for top players, then I suggest trying connect6.

likewowman2cool: Absolutely, but wouldn't that apply to most games? The better the players, the more in-depth understanding they have of the game, and the closer they'll be to optimal play, which will increase any inherent biases in the game.

Carpe Diem: Add "battleboats plus" to the list.

I also want to point out that those pente statistics are deceptive. It is more like 80-95% wins for player one when top players play each other. Scroll to see the match results thus far in this match: Pente (aleph_1 vs. Brf)

FWIW, for the games mentioned thus far, the BK results look like this:

It's my understanding that in Reversi is biased as well but that in Reversie it's actually Player 2 who the advantage.

Pente is that way too. The advantage is not significant for novice players, but expert players rarely lose as Player 1.

In games like these, I think the BKRs should be calculated as follows:

Calculate BKRs separately for games in which the player moved first (Player 1) or second (Player 2). Calculate the percentage of the player's wins that come as Player 1 and as Player 2. Multiply each BKR by the player's winning percentage **of the other position**.

For example, if player has a BKR of 2000 as Player 1 but only 1800 as Player 2 and was Player 1 in 70% of his wins (meaning he was Player 2 in only 30%of his wins) then his BKR should be 2000 * .3 + 1800 * .7 = 1860.

This system usually produces better BKRs than the curent system. And it never produces worse BKRs than the curent system, at least not in any situations that I can think of. I can think of situations where this system wouldn't give a very good result, for example, when a player plays as P2 exclusively. but the system we have in place now doesn't give a good result in these situations either.

Raistlin: I wonder if 3 Maharajahs would be too much? As White, I would try to combine threats against f7, c7 and g7, as a capture on any of these squares with a protected Maharajah would be mate. So Black would have to either protect each of these squares twice, which looks difficult, or create an escape for the king, which looks risky.

cd power: Maharajah chess would be easy to balance : add two more white Maharajahs. For horde chess, its harder...

Roberto Silva: And let's not forget about Maharajah chess... that is probably the worst offender of all the games. If I play the black color, I am 100% guaranteed victory in 24 moves. Anyone who does not believe me, then send me an invite where I am black and I'll prove it to you!

Carpe Diem: Horde chess is another example of imbalance. I think the only effective solution to that is to only play 2-game matches for those games. Of course that's a problem with random game tournaments.

I think Mancala is one of the most skewed games when it comes to first move advantage - 63% - 33%. Does BK ever look at rules tweaks when there is a heavy bias like this?

ketchuplover:

crosseyed: It didn't help matters when someone on the iyt board spoiled the end of The sixth Sense.

So far today I am able to play my games without any problems with this site.

rabbitoid: I'm a member of both and more. I'm sure bk version 420 will have no discusion groups..mearly a place to drop money. sooo glad I never became a black rook.

badgerboy78: Since so many people are experiencing the same problem. Then Fencer should temporary stop time-outs.

BrainKing.com (Fencer, 2009-08-17 08:08:37)

Can't the ISP be approached like in the example above to try and get them to sort out something?

It's been poor for me the past several days. I'm to the point of giving up for a few days and hope it clears up by them. Sorry to the players I've timed out onm (and will time out on.)

From the feedback so far, it seems most people in Europe but one are doing fine, whereas most people in America/Australia are having problems. Like I said, I'm not a bandwith expert.

The site is loading pages fast for me today...so far, so good,

Bwild: Yes I was able to play my games without problems for a short time last night. Today so far I am getting the white pages that takes ages to clear.

rabbitoid: I have no problems with connecting to Goldtoken. It's yourturn used to have discussion boards but they were not monitored like they are on this site and things got so bad he removed them. How can Fencer know that there is a problem with his site if he removed the discussion boards? Would he really like hundreds of emails complaining.

Bwild: Goldtoken is always here if you want it, but they're having far worse connection problems lately than BK, and most of  their client base is US. And itsyourturn solved the connection problem: no discussion groups, so no complaints! now why didn't Fencer think of that simple solution? 

its always been...if it works in Prague...who cares.
fyi...its been terribly slow for me too,these past three days..till this evening,things run better in spurts.

Bernice: What that means, is when I make a move, it is sent firstly to England, then to the West Coast USA before heading to the Czech Republic!

SL-Mark: and what does all that mean?

Bernice: Yes it seems to be working faster at times now and the white page is not coming up so often. I hope it lasts.
At present the superbowl is on in the USA. At present only 100 players in this site?

C:\tracert brainking.com

Tracing route to brainking.com [81.91.83.6]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 585 ms 1 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1
2 27 ms 26 ms 26 ms 85-211-192-1.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com [85.211.192.
1]
3 37 ms 68 ms 37 ms 80.40.155.118
4 76 ms 37 ms 37 ms 80.40.155.107
5 37 ms 37 ms 38 ms xe-9-3-0.bragg001.log.as13285.net [80.40.155.37]

6 40 ms 38 ms 39 ms 80.40.155.70
7 70 ms 42 ms 42 ms xe-9-1-0-scr001.thn.as13285.net [78.144.0.238]
8 45 ms 41 ms 41 ms host-78-144-0-143.as13285.net [78.144.0.143]
9 83 ms 54 ms 48 ms v209.core1.lon1.he.net [216.66.84.213]
10 52 ms 52 ms 51 ms 10gigabitethernet4-2.core1.fra1.he.net [184.105.
213.146]
11 62 ms 68 ms 71 ms 10gigabitethernet1-1.core1.prg1.he.net [184.105.
213.234]
12 58 ms 59 ms 60 ms 216.66.84.27
13 61 ms 60 ms 59 ms gw1-web4u.cas.ip-anywhere.net [81.0.255.17]
14 58 ms 58 ms 72 ms 81.91.95.17
15 62 ms 60 ms 59 ms 81.91.95.10
16 75 ms 78 ms 64 ms web.brainking.com [81.91.83.6]

Trace complete.

well it is running Ok here at the moment....no long delays and no white pages.......I have never had the white page problem before and always wondered what people were talking about.....

SL-Mark:

Bernice: I agree with you Bernice. The word denial comes to mind.

rabbitoid: You must be one of the few lucky ones who is not having a problem with this site. I am in the UK people from the USA, Australia and Canada to name a few other countries who are getting the same problems. It has to be the site at fault.

there ARE problems, but you can't get those in charge to admit it :( sad really after all the money people have paid to be here, you would think there would be better connection/service :(

having problems since late yesterday with making moves ...after 2-3 moves, usually board turns white until i click to get back on the site...

Roberto Silva: I'm not as often here as I used too, but nothing to signal for the past days, works as fast as usual for me (France). Both by regular computer or cell phone.

Bernice: I can only see part of the board when I can get to make a move in game.