I agree with AbigailII. Perhaps it would make more interesting games if shooting and guessing was not exclusive, but rather that player could guess after his own shooting (even multiple guesses should be possible).

After playing hundreds of moves (but only actually finishing a few games), here's my first evaluation of Frog Legs.

Play wise, it's quite boring. There's no real strategy, except from avoiding playing bad moves. If both players don't play any obvious bad moves, the game boils down to filling up allmost all the squares, delaying having to reveal essential information until there's no other move. And then it becomes a game of luck, with the frog(s) to reveal only having two or three squares. Games will last 70 to 80 moves, which, I think, will rank them along the longest games found here on BK.

As for strategy, I use the following guidelines:

• Never guess unless the chance the square contains a frog exceeds 50%.


• If you can shoot a square that is only surrounded by squares of which it's known whether they contain a frog or not, shoot it.


• Never shoot a square that has only one unknown neighbour (an unknown neighbour is a square of which it's unknown wether it contains a frog or not) - you'll give your opponent 5 points if the square reveals a 1. (See below).


• Avoid shooting squares that have an odd number of unknown neighbours; if the number reveals the same number as the number of unknown neighbours, your opponent can guess one more frog than you do. (This is a generalisation of the previous point).

Of course, the current score can influence things. If there are only N frogs to be found, and your are ahead more then 5 * N, by all means, narrow down where the frogs are as soon as possible - it's ok if your opponent guesses the remaining frogs.

Here's an example of where you shouldn't shoot:

   +---+---+---+
 3 |   |   |   |
   +---+---+---+
 2 | 0 |   |   |
   +---+---+---+
 1 |   | 0 |   |
   +---+---+---+
     a   b   c

Don't shoot at b2. It's already known that a1, a3, c2 and c1 do not contain frogs; c3 is the only unknown neighbour of b2. So, if b2 reveals a 1, there will be a frog at c3 with 100% probability. Unless your opponent is making a very stupid mistake, you will lose 5 points.

Jaak: Sure but it's not an easy task to change the model of already existing game, i.e. change the board size etc.

My first move in 2 price tournament games with white: Frog Finder (Jaak vs. DamnCat) and Frog Finder (Jaak vs. Holyman)
You see that I shooted the same square in both games, allocation of my frogs is differen in those games.
However it is a good game, if it is possible to delete tournament games and begin the same game anew? Or to have some safe squares - 4 corners or 5 (9) central squares!

AbigailII:  Interestingly, if you know there are two frogs in four squares, you shouldn't guess.  However, if you know there are two frogs in five squares, you should guess. 

In both cases, you'll guess right often enough that you'll score more points for the right guesses than you'll lose for the wrong guesses.  However, with four squares, if you guess wrong, your opponent can guess with a 2/3 chance of being right, which is good enough that the points he gets from guessing right outweighs the points you might get from guessing right.  With five squares, you still leave your opponent with enough options that guessing is a bad idea, so you just get the payoff from your initial guess.

For those interested in both Frog Finder & Frog Legs - I have to prize tournaments starting soon:

Feb 5 - my 5 year anniversary on the site - coan.net 5 YEARS on BK Frog Finder

Feb 29 - Not often we can start tournaments on this date - coan.net new game Frog Legs PRIZE

Should be fun - come and join!

Fencer:

coan.net: Since I have already tested it on more than 50 games (locally, not here), I declare this issue not to be.

Fencer: OK - So then hopefully the bug has been fixed then!

coan.net: It's important when the invitation was created, and it was most likely before applying a fix.

WellyWales: I would think (and this is a total guess) - but I would think that the game would not be "created" until someone picked up the game - which gave it the game number 3022152

... which the last game mentioned in the bug tracker was 3021714

So I would guess your game was made after the last bug was "fixed" - but maybe it does have something to do with it sitting in the waiting room... but would not think so. (again, just guessing)

coan.net: Would games started or set up before the fix need to be deleted ?? I set the game up in the waiting room, when it was first announced

WellyWales: Which would mean that Fencer has not fixed the bug completely yet.

coan.net: The move was made at 19.03 GMT i.e. 38 minutes ago

AbigailII: Hum... and the game below looks like it was started after Fencer's latest fix (if I'm reading the time of everything correctly).

coan.net: That has been reported and said to be fixed some hours ago: http://brainking.com/en/ReadBug?bgi=1457.

WellyWales: I would not think so - hurry and put that in the Bug Tracker so Fencer can find it and fix it.

note: I would think that since Fencer has it set up for the first middle square to be zero when the game starts, he did not remember to make the random frogs not to be put in the spaces next to the zero. (would be my guess on the bug)

Is this correct ?? a zero next to a frog Frog legs (WellyWales vs. TheCrazyPuppy)

coan.net: It's a very great game to play though. Basiccally, of course, it's just minesweeper, although you have to score by shooting mines.

Futhermore, there are some other rules:
The board is 18x18 and has 51 mines (i think!)
if a player shoots a mine, he'll score, and may play again. (This could cause a problem in BK. But there should be a solution. Just pass the game directly back to the player after every move he scores a hit, like Dice Poker Style. If he didn't score a hit, the move is directly passed to the opponent.)
If a player shoots a zero, ALL squares adjadent to that zero will also open, if there are any zeros among them repeat for each one the process. So shooting zeros is very bad, for you opponent has lots of mines to score.


Conclusion, as, especially I read Abigaill's post, we should add more mines (frogs, sorry) and remove guessing. Just shooting.!

coan.net: I did some calculating what the best action would be if there's a square showing a 1, and it has N neighbours that may have the frog (frog is still hidden). That is, there are N squares around the 1 that are not showing a number, and from the rest of the field, it cannot be determined whether they have a frog or not.

Obviously, if N == 1, you should guess the square, it will contain the frog with 100% certainty, and you will score 5. If N == 2, guessing one of the squares would be wrong. If you guess right, you score 5, but if you guess wrong, not only do you score -3, your opponent will score 5, so your expected result from guessing is -1.5. For N == 3, guessing is also wrong, but your expected score is less bad as in the N == 2 situation. If N == 3, you have a 1 in 3 chance of guessing right, so the expected score is 5 * (1/3) - 3 * (2/3) == -0.33. Note that after guessing wrong, you leave a situation where there are 2 squares that may contain a frog, and it's in your opponents best interest to leave it like that. In fact, for N >= 3, the expected score from guessing is 5 / N - 3 * (N - 1) / N == (8 - 3N) / N.

This will be a very defensive game.

And what we really need is a marker on the field indicating which squares have been unsuccesfully guessed.

joshi tm: Well if it ends up not working with the current point system, then of course I'm sure we can get Fencer to change that if needed..... but we won't know that for sure until we see a few hundred games played.

Nope, never played on MSN network - about the only place I've played minesweeper is the version that comes with windows.

Maybe you can subtract points from the penalty.

By the way do you know of the MSN network game Minesweeper? That one is lots faster to play (and had more mines making everyone crazy)

AbigailII: Yea, it will be interesting to see how much cat/mouse type of play - that is would it be better to just make a dummy shot that you know will show a 0, or take a guess when you have a 33% chance (or 50% chance) - since a wrong guess will only cost you 3 points.

It will be interesting to see if a "safe" game or an aggressive guessing game will work the best.

coan.net: Unfortunally, it also means that it's an advantage to shoot squares where you will already know how it will reveal 0 (like shooting in the corner if your opponent shot (diagonally) one step away from the corner revealing a 0). Such a shot reveals no information at all.

YEA - A new Frog Finder Variant - Frog Legs.

It is played the same way Frog Finder is.

The difference: Instead of each player having 5 frogs, there are 9 frogs that BOTH players are looking for. So your opponent will see your shots - will use the information you got in their next move (and you will use theirs).

So you have to be careful to not give your opponent too much information - and at the same time, don't be afraid to take more guesses since if you wait to figure out 100% where the frog is, your opponent will just swoop in and take it away from you!

HAVE FUN!

coan.net: Interesting. Two more points: if you go first, and you decide to shoot, you don't have a 'safe' shot, there's always the chance to hit something. Making your first action a guess doesn't give your opponent a field he can shoot knowing there's no frog there.

But here's another thing. Say starting with a guess would be a good thing. Then, wouldn't it be good for the player going second to start with a guess as well? But if both players start with a guess, followed by a shot on their guess, what about their third moves? Shouldn't that be a guess too?

coan.net: Personally, I don't hit a frog on my first shot very often. (Rarely, in fact). So, I wouldn't think it was worth it to start off 3 points behind. I suppose if there were more frogs on the board, it might be more worth it, but with the current configuration, I don't think it would help often enough to bother.

I was playing a few games recently, and I noticed someone who is each of our games would make a guess the very first move, then after losing 3 points for bad guess - would take their first shot there.

At first I thought maybe they did not know what they were doing - then after thinking about it (and noticing they have a higher rating then me so they must be doing something right), I started to think if this was a good strategy.

Of course if you have very first shot and shot a frog, all of a sudden you are 10 points behind (since you lose 5, and your opponent gains 5) - this way, they are only down 3 points to start.

Taking a look at about 25 of my past games, the closest score I could find was 5 points - with a few at 8 points, and most more then 10 points separate the 2 sides.

So obviously 3 points lose at the start would not do much damage - but I was wondering what others thought? The risk of hitting a frog on the first shot is slim: 5/139th chance. So what do others think of this strategy?

I still would appreciate if Coan submits the Co-Op variant of Frog Finder to Fencer...

:)

Here is the other interesting game, now that it is complete:

Frog Finder (grillyx vs. coan.net)

B2 is actually a 5 box! (If I had an extra move before losing, I would have taken it to show the "5", but had to guess quickly before losing)

5 box - 4 of my own, and 1 of my opponents hidden in there - making it really hard to find without giving up my own!

Now to find a "6 box"

Here is a game which has 4 of my opponents frogs in an area which I got a "4" box:

Frog Finder (kleineme vs. coan.net)

(and even though I found those early and thought I had a good chance of winning, I still lost.)

I have another interesting game, but it is still ongoing so I will post about that after it is complete.

WellyWales: yes, I hate it !!!
But, I won two of three (or four, not sure) games in which this happened ... it IS possible to win it

coan.net: I have already twice (!) seen a 4. But those were tree of my opponent + 2 of mine.

coan.net: I know, but don't you just hate it when you hit one on the first move. you feel like throwing the towel in

coan.net: I personally have never seen a "4". The highest # I have seen is a "3"

I agree that the random set up is much better.

WellyWales: Actually Frog Finder is the most balanced game on the site!

After over 11,000 games:

red 5938 (50.0 %)
blue 5921 (49.85 %)

To have a 17 game win/lose difference after so many games - WOW.

Maybe the first move by each opponent in frogs should be hidden, this way the second person does not have the advantage of shooting next to the first persons move .....

I've been thinking for awhile about if it would be a good or bad thing to set up your own frogs. (ignoring the fact that there has to be a check in place to make sure frogs aren't setup on same spot)

After thinking about it for awhile, I don't think it would be good for the game.

Why do I think that? Well if I could setup my own frogs, I would probable mostly set them up close to each other - that is for example, put 4 frogs in one of the corners - making it impossible to even see the 4th frog hidden in the corner - leaving someone to either guess blindly - or wait until he checks all other squares on the board.

It could also become more predictable. For example, if I know another player always sets up their battleboat boards - I can learn things like how they normally setup boards. Do they never have any touching each other. Do they never have any touching the side. Do they ... etc.. etc... So if a person always set's up their own frogs, it would also become predictable.

So even though occasionally the random computer will set up my frogs in a "bad" way, after thinking about it - I think it is still best to have the computer randomly place the frogs rather then try to let the users do it themselves.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Have you seen a setup which would put 4 frogs touching 1 square? (that is to possible see a "4" on a square)? (or a 5 for that matter, even though that would be VERY rare.)

troydaniels: that sounds like a great idea

Another idea would be to randomly rotate and flip the board before starting the game. There are (I think) 8 possible changes, so it's very likely that at least one of them would give you an arrangement where no frogs are on top of each other. There's a little bit of information available from the options that weren't picked, but since it's random and rotations always happen, you won't know which ones were rejected because of your opponents frogs and which ones were because of the random factor. If none of the configurations work, just make both players replace all the frogs.

playBunny: I know something better: If a frog is placed above another frog, both die and the square is colored black. No one gets points. That should be fair.

playBunny: a comment on your last statement: in theory a person could also keep regenerating the random placement until they knew where their opponents pieces were too...

dresdali, coan.net: The difficulty with a batleboats-style setup is that the frogs live on the same board and may not share a square. What should happen if both players choose the same square? Disallowing the second player's placement would give away the other's frog.

One way round this would be for each player to place, say, ten frogs and then the system would choose five of them randomly. The ones not chosen may or may not have had a clash but there's nothing to say. The disadvantage is that the random choice removes part of the player's choice, in the case where they wanted to put their frogs in a particular configuration.

Another, and easier, option is for a player simply to be able to regenerate the random placement until they're happy with it.

SKA: Thanks. I'm just so happy to see this game already in the top 10 of active games on this site (Since January 2007) - and almost 10,000 games complete! (currently 9590 complete)

Not only that, when working on the game - I played around with the points of what is won/lose for awhile - and after almost 10,000 games - I can see the game is VERY well balanced.

Red: 49.98% win rate
Blue: 49.85% win rate

When I think up new games, I've been posting them on my website: http://coan.net

I think the co-op version of this game (as mentioned below) would be a great variant - where both players go after the same frogs - so you don't want to give away too much information to your opponent - and will make for more guessing and more chance taking while playing.

Anyway, I'm happy to hear people who like it.

I find this game very refreshing and I hope you'll invent other type similar to this, or something with the use of dice.

Looking to see if we can get close to 20 into this tournament:

The "South of Canada" Frog Finder for 20 players!

Looking for some extra games - JOIN NOW!

coan.net: Even with just 9 froggies, this game should still be fun.

joshi tm: I say 9 because I know most people don't like longer games - for example, the game Froglet - the game was fun for myself & others at first for awhile, but then when games took so long and seem to drag out, at least for myself - those games are less fun. (so a smaller board version of Froglet is still a suggestion I make)

But anyway, back to Frog Finder Co-op. I say 9 to keep it small - but possible have a big variant at a later day with something like 15 or even up to 21 could be a fun variant. But from my years of playing games, smaller & shorter games seem to be more popular in the long run.

At least that is my reasoning for picking 9 as the number of frogs to find (since it is close to the current 10, and with 9 will hopefully help make sure there are less ties then if there were 10 frogs on the board)

coan.net: Yes, perfect! I'ld like to play that, but aren't 9 froggies just few? Should be 11 or 13.

Variant Name: Frog Finder Co-op

Difference: 9 COMPUTER frogs are put on the board randomly. (There is no player 1 / player 2 frogs)

So each player is looking for the same frogs. So when you find an area that a frog is in, you can either (1) take a wild guess, (2) try to reveal more info - which will help your opponent or (3) go shoot somewhere else and see if your opponent will do either 1 or 2.

This game will encourage more guessing since you will not want to shot until you know 100% sure where the frog is since your opponent will then have a chance to guess where the frog is and get the points.

So what do people think? Similar setup to Frog Finder, but totally different strategy to play it!