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posted by mattie_p on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the computer-resists-you dept.

andrew writes: "Over the last decade, computers have been able to dominate human chess players. in that time attention has shifted from creating anti-computer strategies to creating computer-resistant chess variants. The inventor of one such game, Arimraa, has an interesting article on Chessbase.com about what it takes to make a board game in which it is still possible for the best human players to remain competitive against computer software."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by drgibbon on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:15AM

    by drgibbon (74) on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:15AM (#4836) Journal

    Arimaa is a great game. I do prefer chess myself, but the advantage of Arimaa is that you can learn the rules very quickly. All the pieces move the same, it's just a matter of relative strength. Kids can pick it up really fast and start playing meaningful games more or less straight away. Chess takes a bit more time, as the goals are more subtle and harder to comprehend for a rank beginner. There's already some interesting strategy [wikibooks.org] developed for Arimaa too.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Spottywot on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:43AM

    by Spottywot (2784) on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:43AM (#4846)

    Looks like an interesting game, I'll try it. My boy is interested in chess but he's 5 and finding it tough to grasp the principles. I'll learn Arimaa with him and see how he takes to it.
      It is an interesting goal to find a game that humans can be better at than computers,(more like current software finds it hard, or doesn't exist)but chess computers have been around a long time. Can't imagine it would take long for a determined developer to devise something to start the ball rolling. Then again I've not played the game yet.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by drgibbon on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:55AM

      by drgibbon (74) on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:55AM (#4851) Journal

      Kids will probably appreciate the proper board [arimaa.com] (with the animal shaped pieces). They sell it through Amazon [amazon.com] for a reasonable price. I'd like a larger board and pieces myself (and some are a bit hard to distinguish from one another), but they're weighted, and not bad at all.

      You could play with a chess set, but that can make playing chess a bit difficult later on (once you start to see chess pieces as Arimaa pieces).

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by panachocala on Saturday February 22 2014, @12:03PM

    by panachocala (464) on Saturday February 22 2014, @12:03PM (#4855)
    I briefly looked at Arimaa - it has some similarities with Stratego [wikipedia.org]. That was one of my favorite games as a kid (and now with the nieces and nephews).