Thad -

I must admit that you are tricky when you are debating but after fairly EXTREME analysis on several of your messages here, I can clearly see a trend in your tactics to attempt to defend yourself that contains a major fallacy.

What you are doing is what could be possibly called 'The fallacy of non-implication'. I don't know if that is its real name, but it seems reasonable here. Perhaps Dmitri King who is more versed on debate techniques can elaborate on that.

What you are doing is that you don't make SPECFIC comparisons between things, but you very much IMPLY specific comparisons between things. When I say IMPLY, I mean that the comparisons are what MOST reasonable people would INFER are being made. THEN if someone attempts to debate the comparison with you because it is obviously an invalid one, you claim that the comparison was never made and that the person should re-read your post and then you attack the person for misunderstanding you. I have now seen this on several occassions in your posts.

Let me give an example.
Dmitri King talking in response to draws occurring in board games and sporting events:
** 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. **

Your response:
** 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. **

It should be extremely clear to most people if they read the discussion thread leading up to those comments that you are attempting to justify a draw in a board game that could easily be broken by comparing it to a sporting event that has gone on for a very long time and SHOULD be declared a draw, which as I said is an obvious apples to oranges comparison. Thad, perhaps that is NOT what you intended to do! But we can't read your mind. We can only INFER what reasonable people would normally infer. But if you did not imply such a thing, then perhaps a better reason for allowing draws in Poof Pente can be made, so that a good comparison CAN be made.

So when you say that I don't have my facts straight, perhaps it would be better if you clarified the facts better to begin with.

OK, now, you have attempted to nail me several times on the pente.net site. I have not responded to this because little defense is needed. All anyone has to do is to go play at the site and see why. The last time I checked a month ago, the ratings there are the # of a player's wins * 100 + the win pct., there are no time controls for the games, and there are no tournaments. It's quite invalid to compare that site to the Oklahoma City tournament. Would you not agree that any serious Pente entity, whether it be a site, organization, or whatever should have tournaments and/or organized events and a valid ranking or rating system? Even IYT uses 'Level 2' or 'Level 3' in some of their games for players who have advanced to the 2nd or 3rd round of a tournament so that they can play in those 'level' of tournaments in the future. I mean doesn't that make sense? How can pente.net hope to grow if it doesn't do such a thing? It is not my intent to be deragatory towards people if they play at the site by calling it a 'mom and pop site'. If that sounds insulting, then I will refrain from it and just call it a 'non-serious' or 'small' site because that is really what it is.

Also, playpente.com is an information only pente website that is run, as far as I know, solely by Greg Stange. In effect, it is no different than Mark Mammel's site, which is an excellent site that has information about all kinds of interesting things both game and math related and MANY excellent things that can be downloaded. These are not actual game-playing sites.


Your witness...


Gary


P.S. It is good to see that Waterdancer agrees that play should continue if the capture count is 10-10 instead of the game being declared a draw. If a draw can be easily broken, then it should be.