playstrategy.org

New Variant Proposal

#1

Every variant family has atleast two variants-
Chess (12)
Draughts (11)
Lines of Action (2)
Abalone (2)
Backgammon (3)
etc.

EXCEPT
Amazons

My suggestion is to have an amazons variant-
no major changes- just that either (or both)-
1) change of movement
2) change of starting position

honestly, the only reason i say this is so that we will have an amazons medley and another shield to play for.

See if it works

#2

I think it would be good to have placement amazons.

1. Empty board
2. Player 1 places his first amazon piece anywhere on the 10x10 board, then player 2 places his first amazon piece, then player 1 places his second piece, etc.
3. After all 8 have been placed, don't know if it's more balanced if player 1 or player 2 gets the first move

Standard amazons has a big diadvantage for the second player, so I think it's good to try to even it out

#4

Or how about a hexagonal board?

#5

Yes you can change the board size like in other games Othello, abalone, Breakthrough, Go, ...

#7

@LeftCleverGlove i agree with your analysis. It would be nice to add an Amazons variant - unfortunately it's technically a little complicated to add an Amazons variant, but its not impossible, and maybe one day we will!

@ll "Standard amazons has a big diadvantage for the second player" - I think a lot of people intuitively feel this, but the reality is that the advantage is small and is balanced out by skill over the course of the game. Have a think about what you might think the win % is for the starting player, and then you can see the figures yourself by looking here playstrategy.org/library/amazons

#8

@statmatt Most games are not played against two high rated people who know opening theory and principles. The more two players learn about opening theory and principles, the bigger the disadvantage for the second player as it becomes harder to escape from a bad starting position if the first player knows what he is doing and keeps trapping and making favorable positions, kind of like atomic in my opinion

And if that wasn't the case, having the freedom to put pieces breaks the monotony and makes opening theory much more difficult similar to what placement chess does to standard chess. (www.pychess.org/variants/placement)

#10

@ll i agree with your comments in principle, but I'll provide another counter example from the most recent MSO Amazons tournament: playstrategy.org/swiss/bBGQ3NRr. Here we have some of the strongest Amazons games played on PlayStrategy. Its a small sample size, but the win % isn't significantly off 50-50, but more interestingly both of the games that the top two players lost came whilst playing as White, and several of the games lost by players in the next tier of players (3rd-7th) also came whilst playing as White.

Given the choice, I would always intuitively pick to play White in Amazons, but I think its less of an advantage than you would expect.

From all the data we have, there are other variants like LOA which has a similar number of games played to Amazons on this site, but a higher win % for the starting player both in overall games (playstrategy.org/library/linesOfAction) and in the recent MSO tournament: playstrategy.org/swiss/Ru68Sf57

However, whether there is a notable FPA or not, doesn't have any impact on whether PlayStrategy prioritises adding an Amazons variant.

Reconnecting