Walter:

"Why suddenly outlaw it for a game that isn't even played except by waterdancer? He made it up, let him play it his way."

outlawing is a strong word to use here. We are just tryin to figure out the best way to play this new variant, if at all. You say we should let Waterdancer play it his own way just because he made the game? Well, Waterdancer is here ASKING for input as to how his game could be made viable and interesting enough for pente players to want to play it. obviously he can do wjhatever he wants, but everyone else can do the asme and ignore the variant altogether. I do not think his intent is to just do whatever he wants, because he seems receptive to suggestions.

NOw, about draws in general. The opint of a board game is to WIN. It really irritates me that so many people choose to overlook or ignore this fact in part of in full. Even those who play for fun are still trying to make the necessary moves to WIN theg ame. Well, why have a draw possible if it doesn't have to be? I tihnk a game designed such there MUST be a winner is a well designed game! In some games there is no way to avoid a draw, but in pente thtree is. But your reasoning for allowing draws to occur seems to be "well, why not allow draws to occur?"

When a game can so easily be made to NOT have draws, why have them at all? How does it is any way make the game better?

you said "This whole culture of insisting on having a winner cheapens a lot of sporting contests. "

I disagree. I suppose having the world series, NBA finals, or Super Bowl be declared a tie wuold be acceptable to you?

Why are so many people against the idea that some people are going to win and some people are going to lose? I don't asee how breaking a tie in any way cheapens anything.

remember the all star game lkast year in baseball? It was declared a tiw and there was uproar, the fans felt cheated.

As for pente for opints. I think this is just an outright terrible idea. Soemone who has allowed his opponent to make a 5 in a row could win by extending a bunhc of meaningless 3s before resigning to his opponent's double 3 threat. I cannot comprehend how that scenario would make sense to anyone. that's like saying "if you chekcmate your opponent but he has more pieces that you do, he wins."

The entire basis of the game of pente is supposed to make 5 in a row or make 5 captures (hence the name pente). Creating a situation where the player who accomplished this task LOSES is just asinine to me.

ONe final thought on the draw situation for waterdancer's variant. I would like to propose that there is no draw at all. When a piece is placed, if it is poofed, it CANNOT make any acptured that it would make if it stayed on the board. if a PENTE does not cunt when a piece is poofed, why should a capture? this is blatantly inconsistent! so if I make a winning capture, but MY piece gets poofed for mjy opponent's winning capture, he wins and I lose. So now I am not even sure what the fuss is all about.

<Dmitri & Walter,

The problem with the All-Star game wasn't that it ended in a tie. The problem is that the idiot we have for a baseball commissioner changed the rules in the middle of the game!!

You can't do that!!!

I think they should make the All Star game, and the All-Star game only, end after 11 innings if it's a tie. That way, managers can plan appropriately to use all their players without significant risk of injury or overuse, etc. Yes, it would be a tie, but it's an exhibition game anyway. The point is to see some top quality play by some top quality players, not who wins or loses that game. BUT, we'd need to know the game was going to be played that way from the start.

I agree with Walter that 'This whole culture of insisting on having a winner cheapens a lot of sporting contests.' College football's tiebreaker, to use Gary's words, is 'detrimental to the long term development of the game'. The scores & player's statistics are artificially inflated and as Walter said, games are 'played with some other version of football after regulation time to determine a winner'.

In response to Dmitri who said:
>>Why are so many people against the idea that some people are going to win and some people are going to lose? I don't asee how breaking a tie in any way cheapens anything.

I read about a game once played by a bunch of kids in a youth soccer league. They played the regulation time to a tie. They played two sudden death overtimes to a tie. They had not one, not two, but three shootouts. Results every time...tie. Finally, whoever was in charge decided to flip a coin to decide the winner. They flipped it, but it landed in the grass on an angle and couldn't be called as a heads or tails...twice! Finally, they declared the game a tie. Now how do you those kids who would have been on the losing team would have felt if they had lost after regulation, two overtimes, three shootouts and a coin toss only to lose after that??? The game was a freakin' tie!! Let it be one! Sometimes a game is a tie and it's just something we have to deal with.

I think hockey has got it right, although they have tweaked their rules in the past few years and are starting to mess up a good thing. They play a short overtime period during the regular season. If that ends in a tie, so does the game. In the playoffs, they play full length periods until someone scores. I watched a five overtime period game once. It was phenomenal. I had to become a hockey fan before I appreciated the beauty of playoff hockey and long, long games, but it's a great system. But, if they played all the regular season games out this way, it wouldn't work, because whoever played either team next would get an exhausted opponent and have an unfair advantage. So the ties are needed.

I agree with Dmitri that draws in pente at IYT should not be permitted. Since you can't play to a draw, you shouldn't be able to agree to one. I haven't looked to see if we can do that here. Can we? I can see an instance where you might want to agree to a draw so that a friend can win a tournament section or tie for top honors or something when he otherwise wouldn't. While it's nice to do for a buddy, it hurts the other player who really deserved the top spot and shouldn't be permitted.

Walter,
I didn't choose to engage Gary for three reasons:
From what he said, it seemed like he just wanted to get into it with me for the sake of having an argument/debate/call it what you want and I don't play that game. I have better things to do than argue just for the sake of arguing. Perhaps that's not what he intended, but that's how I interpreted what he said.

2. Gary, applies reasoning to his points in his arguments selectively, NOT in a consistent, logical manner. For example, in one post, he wrote that no respectable pente site allows the unrestricted opening moves. In the same sentence, he promoted the upcoming OKC tournament and that the opening restriction would be used there and that the mighty World Pente Federation would be having it's first meeting there. I replied by posting about pente.net, which allows several variants of pente. Gary's reply was that pente.net doesn't count because it's a mom & pop website.

What a crock!! If pente.net is mom & pop, then what does that say about the OKC tournament and the site associated with it, playpente.com? The tournament is limited to twenty-five people max!! Measure it by daily visits, bandwidth, whatever you want. I'll bet pente.net's use FAR exceeds playpente.com's, yet the site he mentioned counts and the one I mentioned didn't!

In another post he said that any game currently being played on IYT and here was valid. Further, challenged everyone to find a game that met a list of criteria, claiming that any game which did, was invalid. I told him that his premise (and challenge) ITSELF was invalid. Let's say we did find a game played here which fit his list of criteria, what would that prove? According to his premise, it would prove that the game was invalid, but he had already said that all games played here are valid. A game can't be both valid and invalid!! Therefore, HIS PREMISE WAS INVALID. I tried to tell him that several times, but he didn't get it.

3) Gary uses a lot of bad logic, but buries it in long posts so most people don't notice. Here's an example:
Gary said, 'Draws should not occur. Yes they would be quite rare in Poof Pente, but the fact that they WOULD be rare is a good reason to not have them at all.'

So if draws are rare, we should get rid of them altogether? Where's the logic in that? I'll tell you where, nowhere. Why should we get rid of something just because it's rarely occurs? Lunar eclipses are rare (there's one this week, it's the first in three years), I guess we should move the Earth so they don't occur anymore, 'cause Gary says, 'the fact that they [are] rare is a good reason to not have them at all.'

Obviously moving the Earth to avoid eclipses is ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than Gary's statement, and that's my point here.

Now, about this World Pente Federation, is it really an organized entity? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? Does it have by-laws or certification of any kind? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? Do they have any connection to the legal rights holder of 'Pente'? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? And finally, will there actually be significant representation by anyone from any part of the world outside North America? Or just a bunch of (American) guys who decided to form a little group?

A final note: I showed my wife the thread about draws and my & Gary's comments and how I declined to get into it with him. She responded that Gary wouldn't like that. I said why? She said that if Gary doesn't want draws, then he'll be mad at you for leaving the debate where it is. Again, I said why? She said, 'Because it's a draw!' LMAO!!! ROTFMLAO!!!!!

Thad

Thad, regarding your analogy to the kids who had three shootouts and then coin tosses. you said "Sometimes a game is a tie and it's just something we have to deal with. "

YEs, obviously after many hours of shootouts, sometimes a tie has to be called. But your analogy is extremely weak, because a game of pente does not require more than another few mmoves to break the tie. My opint is, a tie should only becalled when NECESSARY, after a simple means of breaking a tie has failed!

in thep ente game, you and Walter arew advocating that NO reasonable measures ne taken to decide a tie, when in fact, a tie could be decided WITHOUT an alteration in the game play (as opposed to a sporting event where thye go to a shootout of some sort, wihch isd vastly different from the actual game).

Thad, you said "I agree with Dmitri that draws in pente at IYT should not be permitted."

I said no such thing, not that I can recall. If I did, it was an egregious error, because I absolutely do not agree with tjhat statement. If I did say that it was probably a typo.

I see no reason not to be able to offer a draw. that si not the same as the game actually being in a drawn position. Maybe if my opponnet had a misclick of his mouse and his stone ended up in the wrong place I would offer him a draw instad of taking a win that I might not deserve. I may or may not do that, but the options should be there.

As for what you said about throwing a game so that a friend canadvance--- hogwash. People can do that now. There are doznes of ways to cheat at turn based games, we just assume that people will not use them becasue tre isnlt any reason to.

The same crappy argument cabout cheating was used by IYT to not have rated games. Just because sometihng can bve abused does not mean it should be abolished.

There are exceptions of course. I should not be allowed to own a nuclear missile, for example. BUt for someihtng like draw offers, the possibility of cheaing is not enouhg to eliminate them.

Dmitri,

Looks like I misquoted you. Sorry. I could have sworn you said something along those lines, but I can't find it now. Possibly I was looking at what someone else wrote and thought it was from you. I was replying to several earlier posts at once, guess I got a little confused.

Thad

Thad, it's no big deal, i think I see what happened: in Walter Montego's post of 13. May 2003, 12:05:40


in his thurd paragraph I believe he made the comment that you mistakenly attributed to me. I haev done the same thing when reading many posts from different people, it is easy to mix up who said what for a partiicular quuote.

<Thad,

>Now, about this World Pente Federation, is it really an organized entity? Does it have by-laws or certification of any kind?
We have drawn up by-laws and will discuss them this weekend. We are applying to be a non-profit organization.

>Do they have any connection to the legal rights holder of 'Pente'?
We are working on that but it is proving to be difficult. It would be important to work with the company that owns the rights or to obtain the rights.

>And finally, will there actually be significant representation by anyone from any part of the world outside North America?
I definitely hope so, some focus will be on local tournaments in the US but we also want to be an official organization for international play (internet) with representation from various countries.
-Mark

Mark,

Thanks for the info. That's all good to hear.

Thad

Walter -

Thanks a bunch for bringing up another game that has a move similar to the new Poof Pente variant that has been suggested. It is interesting that there is another game that has that kind of move. It's just so unusual and I had not seen it before. I should have known that you would be a GREAT source for MANY different variaties of games! Also, I wanted to say nice post and several good points made!

Back on the subject of draws, I think my intent was taken out of context.

When I said 'There should be no draws', I SHOULD have said is that 'There should be NO draws in board games and ONLY in sporting events if a REASONABLE amount of time has expired.' I realize that many will disagree with me on that point, but THAT is what I meant.

I do NOT think that ALL sporting events should have ALL ties broken with their CURRENT rules. Of course I agree that the kids soccer game that Thad brought up should end in a tie. I also think it would be poor practice to break all regular-season ties in hockey. But...TO ME what that points out is an inherent problem with the CURRENT BASIC rules of the game or sporting event.

The basic problem in hockey and soccer is that it is too difficult to score. In my opinion, in soccer the offsides rule should be eliminated and the game be played as 8 vs. 8. I'm sure I'll get some backlash for that, but having the average score for a team in MSL soccer at 2 goals/side/game is the MAIN reason that the sport is having difficulty becoming popular in the U.S. It is just simply TOO low scoring! And low scores result in difficulty in breaking ties in a correct manner.

In hockey, the problem could be resolved by simply increasing the size of the TEENY net. There's no reason to have such a small goal and allow the goalee to wear such bulky pads to stop the shots.

I DO agree BIG TIME with Thad about the METHOD in which ties are broken in some sports. They should be broken in the EXACT manner in which the game is played to begin with with the exception of the sudden death element so that games don't keep going and going. I despise shootouts in soccer and the method of placing the ball on the 25-yard line in college football. There's no comparison to the regular game. In overtime, kicking and special teams means little in college football and defense means nothing in soccer with shootouts.

NFL football ALMOST has it right, but not quite. They need to allow BOTH sides at least ONE possession of the ball, THEN it becomes sudden death. Also, they need to extend it to a second overtime. This is reasonable because the players have a week off between games unlike hockey and usually soccer. Basketball and baseball have it PERFECT!

Good question about my comparing communism to draws. In communism, the government controls most or all things and decides who does what as though everyone were equal. Socialism just does that to a lesser extent. It is my feeling that allowing draws to stand in games where they can be easily broken is the equivalent of calling people equal, just like communism does. They should be allowed to continue unfettered so that the better person comes out ahead (a majority of the time anyway).


Gary