I played with the tournament rules. After trying
several "standard" rules games I came to the
conclusion that they are fundamentally less
interesting because one can never be put into a
position where you have to win by a method other than
claiming white marbles. With 5 total white marbles
someone can always claim 3. In the tournament
version, the 6 available white marbles can be split
3-3 (as they often are in advanced play) and one has
to alter ones strategy.

The Zertz AI violates the fundamental principle of
opening strategy on the small board. There is a
forced win for the second player if the first player:

1) Plays the first marble on the edge of the board, or

2) removes a non-corner ruing in the first move.

Lesson 1 was brought home to me in my first serious
game on Richard's PBEM server! Rule 2 was only
pointed out to me somewhat later and I was able to
verify.

At a minimum I would suggest changing the AI so that
it never fell into one of these two traps (the
equivalent of a Fool's Mate in chess). There is a way
in these situations for the second player to force the
capture of two white marbles while giving up 1 white,
2 grey and 3 black and leaving an empty board. Then
no matter where the first player plays on the now
empty board, the second player can gain an additional
two whites.

An interesting next step would be to make sure that
the AI knows how to take advantage of either of these
two mistakes! The first is easier to deal with. It
essentially entails isolating the marble into a corner
and I believe in no case involves allowing the first
player an unforced move. Some of the cases for rule 2
lead to situations where you have to allow an unforced
choice of captures even though both branches lead to
the desired result.

Cheers,

Lyman

--- Martin Trautmann <martintrautmann@...> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> sorry, I missed to mention the homepage of Holtz:
> http://holtz.sf.net/
> Download:
> http://holtz.sf.net/down.php
>
> kind regards,
>
> Martin
>
> Am Montag, den 03.09.2007, 14:39 -0700 schrieb Lyman
> Hurd:
> > I for one would love to help test. Can you let us
> > know where to download the latest? I mainly have
> > access to Windows systems but can find a Linux one
> if
> > needed!
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Lyman
>
>
>