To all -

Here are some more thoughts on matters here:

1. It is not a good indicator to use stats obtained from playing the general public as a whole for determining the advantage of one side or the other in any game. As a general rule, the average person in the playing public has no idea about playing strategy and your stats can be very much skewed by playing one player many times. Using tournament stats is more accurate and using late round tournament stats is MOST accurate.

2. Although the games were invented on 19x19 boards, I don't think it's a big deal to play them on 13x13 boards if that is what you wish to do. I aknowledge that the side of the board CAN make for some interesting play.

3. I have a BIG problem playing Pente or Keryo Pente WITHOUT the opening restriction in any kind of serious play. But I would be willing to play them as player 1 ONLY on a 13x13 board at IYT if someone wants to invite me. (IYT I.D. Pente champ, name Gary Barnes) I don't remember if I need to do the invite or my opponent if I want to be player 1. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. The only reason that I will do this is to show the overwhelming advantage enjoyed by player 1 without the opening restriction.

4. I do agree that the advantage of player 1 in Keryo Pente is moderately reduced on a 13x13 board if the opening restriction is used. If the restriction is not used, the advantage is only SLIGHTLY reduced almost to the point of being non-existent.

5. The opening restriction IS used in BOTH Pente and Keryo Pente here at Brain King.

6. Dangerous Mind, as I stated once before, mathematically there is a HUGE difference between percentages at one end of the bell-shaped statistical curve.

I will elaborate on #6. For several hundred games played, the difference between 53.5% and 46.5% is not particularly significant, but the difference between 97% and 90% is EXTREMELY significant. If you used the full slippery-slope there, you could take it out to 100% and 93%. This would mean that out of 240 games, you would have lost ZERO games as player 1 and SEVENTEEN games as player 2. I don't need to even mention the statistical significance of that. The significance would be the equivalant of one side beating the other 17 out of 17 times!

I think Walter put it best using ratios previously so I'll use his method of explaining it using your stats:
As player 1:
97% = 97 to 3
win ratio 32.3 to 1
losses frequency 1 / 33.3

As player 2:
90% = 90 to 10
win ratio 9.0 to 1
loss frequency 1 / 10.0

So you have a 1 in 10 chance of losing as player 2 and a 1 in 33.3 chance chance of losing as player 1. That means that you are over 3 times (33.3 / 10.0 ) as likely to lose as player 2 as you are as player 1!!

And this is only from playing the non-strategy minded general public. Imagine what it would be like amongst very experienced good players. So as you can see, Dangerous, the 7% difference is actually quite HUGE!!


Gary Barnes