HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Shark)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Think 2nd Small
Date: 23 Nov 92 22:42:05 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York

In <By6uqr.70w@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> hachipma@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Hugh Chipman) writes:

>In article <1992Nov22.172020.15577@newstand.syr.edu> pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:

>I'd like to see another version of game 1 played, since the capacity
>for mind games probably won't diminish until about the 100 game mark,
>as long as the results are always published after each game.

Sure, why not.  I'll run another game like the first.  For those who don't
know the rules, here they are:

Send me e-mail with an integer.  The winner of this game is the person who
sent me the lowest integer that nobody else has sent.  The deadline for this
game will be December 4 at noon EST.  Send your numbers to: 
am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu

All results will be posted sometime.

Shark
-- 
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural
deficiency in moral fiber," he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore
excused from saving Universes."		--Ford Prefect
Shark (aka Adam Mackenroth)		am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
From: benko@news.dcs.warwick.ac.uk (David Benko)
Subject: Re: New game: Think Small
Originator: benko@granite
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:35:32 GMT


There's a mistake in article 377. The correct formula for Pn:

                       (N-1)!            k1  k2         k/n-1/                kn
  Pn =   SUM      ___________________  P1  P2  ...P/n-1/      (1-P1-P2-...-Pn)
        k1>=2         
        k2>=2       k1!k2!...kn!
        ...
      k/n-1/>=2
 kn=N-1-k1-...-k/n-1/>=0   

              N-1          N-1             N-2
E.g. P2=(1-P2)   -(1-P1-P2)   -nP1(1-P1-P2)      /after simplifying the formula above/
Other argue: The first term means: nobody chose number 2 /only me/
                      second term: nobody chose 1, either /bad for me/
                       third term: only one player chose 1 /bad, too/

David Benko
From: am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Shark)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Think 2nd Small
Date: 23 Nov 92 23:13:58 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York

In <1992Nov23.224205.23504@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Shark) writes:

>In <By6uqr.70w@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca> hachipma@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Hugh Chipman) writes:

>>In article <1992Nov22.172020.15577@newstand.syr.edu> pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:

>>I'd like to see another version of game 1 played, since the capacity
>>for mind games probably won't diminish until about the 100 game mark,
>>as long as the results are always published after each game.

>Sure, why not.  I'll run another game like the first.  For those who don't
>know the rules, here they are:

>Send me e-mail with an integer.  The winner of this game is the person who
>sent me the lowest integer that nobody else has sent.  The deadline for this
>game will be December 4 at noon EST.  Send your numbers to: 
>am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu

I forgot one minor rule.  Only one entry per person.

Shark
-- 
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural
deficiency in moral fiber," he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore
excused from saving Universes."		--Ford Prefect
Shark (aka Adam Mackenroth)		am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: nwbernst@unix.amherst.edu (Neil Bernstein)
Subject: Re: Icehouse
Organization: Amherst College
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 05:00:27 GMT

Rob Borsari (jake@melmac.umd.edu) wrote:
: 
:  Hi, I am looking for anyone in the tucson or phoenix area that plays
:  Icehouse.  -R-

	C'mon, dude, post the rules.  You might get yourself a few competitors.

			- Neil "Anything's Better Than Work, Except Reaction-
			  Intensive, Eye-Destroying, Beep-Producing Games"
			  Bernstein -- now do you see why I am a Struggling
			  Classics Major
From: flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Sprouts -- a topological game
Date: 17 Nov 92 19:34:24 GMT
	<1992Nov15.212811.5380@pellns.alleg.edu>

_Winning Ways_ volume 2 has a section on Sprouts and Sprout-like
games.  In there it says Sprouts was "introduced by M. S. Paterson and
J. H. Conway some time ago".
--
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Gale's Game
Date: 23 Nov 92 19:19:20 GMT
	<MJD.92Nov20181855@saul.cis.upenn.edu>
	<1992Nov21.120351.19368@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Organization: Computing Department, Imperial College, London, UK
NNTP-Posting-Host: wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk
In-reply-to: cet1@cus.cam.ac.uk's message of Sat, 21 Nov 1992 12:03:51 GMT

In article <MJD.92Nov20181855@saul.cis.upenn.edu>,
mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Jasper Titus) wrote:

>No.  The rules of the game are exactly as follows: (I changed your
>numbering because it was bizarre)
> 
> 	1.  Choose integers M and N to be the size of your board.
> 
> 	2.  A legal move is a choice of integers (p, q), with 1<=p<=M
> 	    and 1<=q<=N, and such that there's no previous move (x, y)
> 	    with (x<=p and y<=q).
> 
> 	3.  If you play (1, 1), you lose.

In article <1992Nov21.120351.19368@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
cet1@phx.cam.ac.uk (Chris Thompson) wrote:

>Isn't this the game that is called Chomp in Winning Ways?

It is a special case of Poison Cookie where, if I remember rightly,
one square of a rectangular grid (the cookie) is marked as poison and
the players alternate taking rectangular bites *from any direction*
until the last one loses when he has to eat the poison.  I can't
remember if a bite had to include a corner or if you could nibble in
from a side.
--
Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk>
So Biggs, you're the idiot who bought all these IBM PCs.  You're fired!
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: hallyb@globbo.enet.dec.com (John Hallyburton)
Subject: Re: Mornington Crescent
Organization: Twin Peaks Municipal Software Works
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 20:03:54 GMT


;>   Mornington Crescent is limited by the finite number
;>   of stations on the London Underground.
; 
;Under American rules, you are correct, but the standard rules have no
;prohibition against naming a station that's already been named.

But isn't that "bad form"?  Even if it carries a high score I thought it was
ever so gauche to repeat a station.  But I've never actually been to London...
--
						"The Smart Money was on Goliath"
						John Hallyburton 43 55'N 71 45'W
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: raford@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Robert Ford)
Subject: Application of the biggest number game
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 02:54:10 GMT


I've come up with an application for this game.


>Toby Donaldson (tjdonald@neumann.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>: I propose the following rules for "The Biggest Number Game"
>: (as my brother calls it).
>: 
>: 2. Number must be specified exactly. That means you can't write down something
>:    like "My number is equal to the total number of electrons in the observable
>:    universe".
>:       
>: 4. You must be able to specify your number on one side of one sheet of paper.

(What happened to #3 up there??)



The telephone company should propose that which ever customer has the highest
telephone bill that month doesn't have to pay anything.

There are lots of ways of getting very high telephone bills to participate in
this type of contest: rent 15 phone lines, get call-waiting, rent a lot
of telephones, have people in Japan call you collect and talk for the whole
month, etc.  Of course if you do this and you miss the highest by a couple
of dollars you may not enjoy the next time you get your phone bill.


Robert Ford
University of Waterloo

Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: ben@cs.vu.nl (Bruschke BAH)
Subject: Re: Othello - Windows Reversi
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 17:49:09 GMT

davidal@comm.mot.com (UK702 DavidAlexander) writes:

>In article <walker.722135660@s1.elec.uq.oz.au>, Steven Walker writes:
>|>
>|> I have just finished an undergraduate thesis on getting a neural
>|> net to play Othello. With no search whatsoever the neural net
>|> can now compete evenly with Expert level on the Windows game.

>This is very interesting.  If I may be so bold as to ask a few questions :
>
>    i) What language was it written in (or was it hardware)?
>   ii) What type of neural net was it?
>  iii) How many nodes/connections did it have?
>   iv) Have you entered it in any competitions?
>       (I presume not from your article.)
>    v) How fast is it?
>
>TTFN
>David

I would be interested in these results as well. Could you (Steven Walker)
provide me with some more info as well?

		
					Ben Bruschke <ben@cs.vu.nl>
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Think 2nd Small
Date: 23 Nov 1992 18:01 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: zeus.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Shark) writes...
>Send me e-mail with an integer.  The winner of this game is the person who
>sent me the lowest integer that nobody else has sent.  The deadline for this
>game will be December 4 at noon EST.  Send your numbers to: 
>am001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu

This time I sent the number 5

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: macbeth@cats.ucsc.edu (Ryan Mercer Davis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: What???
Date: 18 Nov 1992 01:22:46 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu



AND NOW ITS TIME FOR YOUR FAVORITE USENET GAMESHOW:
<drum roll>
BUG OR FEATURE!!!!

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
                   macbeth@cats.ucsc.edu |
   /\  /\                                |  Realism, n : Nature as seen through
  //\\//\\                               |               the eyes of a toad.
 //  \/  \\    A   C   B   E   T   H     |
//        \\  ----------=====}=====O     |  --- Open locks
"By the pricking of my thumbs,           |  --- Whoe'r knocks.
 Something wicked this way comes!"       | Send my opinions to /dev/null.
From: cet1@cus.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Othello search space (Was: World Othello Championships)
Date: 16 Nov 92 16:38:32 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

In article <cpD=yd+@engin.umich.edu>, positron@engin.umich.edu (Jonathan Scott Haas)
writes:
|> In article <STARBACK.92Nov15121935@Minsk.docs.uu.se> starback@student.docs.uu.se
|> (Per Starb{ck) writes:
|> >Tom Fawcett <tomf@gte.com> wrote:
|> >> No, it [Othello] hasn't been solved, and probably won't be.  The
|> >> search space is estimated to have about 10^60 nodes, [...]
|> >
|> >What kind of fancy combinatorics do you need to get to that number?
|> 
|> Well, a game of Othello is about 60 moves, and there's about 10 choices
|> for each move...

I would have thought that 10 was a substantial overestimate for the average
number of legal moves in a typical position during a game. But in any case,
this is estimating the number of legal games, while "nodes" suggests to me
the number of legal *positions*. This is trivially bounded by 3^64 (each
square is empty, white, or black) < 3.5*10^30.

Chris Thompson
JANET:    cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx
Internet: cet1@phx.cam.ac.uk
 
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: umsmigi0@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Trevor Allan Smigiel)
Subject: Looking for 3 player games and rules to use with dominoes.
Keywords: dominoe three
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 10:26:17 GMT

     Subject says it all.  I am looking for rules to any three player
game or variations on games to play with three players.  Also, any
rules to use with dominoes.  I have a set with no rules and would
like to learn some games with them.

Thanks,
Trevor
From: tomf@gte.com (Tom Fawcett)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Othello search space (Was: World Othello Championships)
Date: 15 Nov 92 19:49:27 GMT
	<STARBACK.92Nov15121935@Minsk.docs.uu.se> <cpD=yd+@engin.umich.edu>
Reply-To: tomf@gte.com
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Inc.
In-reply-to: positron@engin.umich.edu's message of 15 Nov 92 17:55:15 GMT

positron@engin.umich.edu (Jonathan Scott Haas) writes:

   starback@student.docs.uu.se (Per Starb{ck) writes:
   >Tom Fawcett <tomf@gte.com> wrote:
   >> No, it [Othello] hasn't been solved, and probably won't be.  The
   >> search space is estimated to have about 10^60 nodes, [...]
   >
   >What kind of fancy combinatorics do you need to get to that number?

   Well, a game of Othello is about 60 moves, and there's about 10 choices
   for each move...


There's no precise way of calculating the total number of nodes tractably.
The numbers I cited were estimates from a paper by Peter Frey, and he didn't say
how he derived them.  If you look at Rosenbloom's AI Journal paper ("A World
Championship-level Othello Program") you can calculate it yourself from his
graph of average mobility.  I think it comes out to 10^50, so maybe
Frey was being generous.

-Tom
From: ray@acsu.buffalo.edu (Erik 'indiscoverable antipathy' Ray)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Shogi
Date: 20 Nov 92 18:39:03 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci

In article <1992Nov19.075211.21301@wixer.cactus.org> cat@wixer.cactus.org (Dr. Cat) writes:
>
>   I have played Shogi on a few occasions, and have a set that a friend
>brought back from Japan for me.  Don't know the game well, though.

Shogi has the interesting property of (potentially) infinite playing time.
That's due to the fact that you can replace captured pieces as your own.
What does that do to game theory?  Are there any other games that have
potentially infinite playing time?  It is more complicated than just cyclic
game trees.  I wonder if two well-matched shogi players couldn't keep
playing forever.

-- 
--Erik Ray
					yes help > /dev/null
From: mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu ("[*] The Wumpus")
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Icehouse
Date: 19 Nov 92 16:15:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: saul.MJD.92Nov19111546
Followup-To: misc.misc
Organization: Eaters of Wisdom
In-reply-to: jake@melmac.umd.edu's message of 19 Nov 92 01:42:23 GMT

In article <17065@umd5.umd.edu> jake@melmac.umd.edu (Rob Borsari) writes:
>    Hi, I am looking for anyone in the tucson or phoenix area that plays
>    Icehouse.  -R-

    Icehouse is abut the least abstract game I can think of, since you
actually have to have the little metal pyramids to play.  It's about as
abstract as mumblety-peg or spin-the-bottle.

--

                And for to se, and eek for to be seye
Mark-Jason Dominus 	  			    mjd@central.cis.upenn.edu 
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor)
Subject: Equalization.
Organization: Department of Mathematics, University of Canterbury
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 02:55:17 GMT

The matter of "equalization" is a pressing one, in many games.

That is, in games where there is a massive advantage to playing first, 
(most of them !), how to try and overcome this. 

One way, of course, is just to play two games simultaneously. But in real life
this gets a little distracting.  Another method is to give one player first
move, and then each player two moves in turn. But this tends to make it a
whole new game, with quite different tactics and strategy, (though these 
variants are often quite fascinating in their own right).

But now we have just seen posted a simple equalizing method, by David Bush, 
(in a post about Twixt).  It seems applicable to almost any game, is very simple,
hardly changes the play of the game at all, and seems very fair.

=============
PLAYER ONE just plays 2 moves for white and 1 for black. Black will move next.

PLAYER TWO then elects to be either black or white. The game proceeds normally.
=============

BRILLIANT !  This three-move equalization should really become standard !
                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~            
It is not a new idea of course, being a (thankfully!) simplified version of a
standard method of equalizing Go-Moku by Japanese experts.  But it is so simple
that it really ought to become more well known.

It would have good effects, too, in chess, where the openings are too well
analysed to give the non-reader an equal chance with the reader of chess mags.

I said it "seems very fair".  And so it is, in principle, at least. Of course
there may be games where three moves simply can't *be* picked that leave an
equal situation, simply because the moves are too coarse in their effects. But
I suspect these games would be a bit unsatisfactory anyway.  Most standard games
and others menbtioned in this group seem very amenable to "3-move equalaization".

The main objection to fairness would be that in practice, it's a bit like
one-person-cutting-the-cake-and-the-other-choosing. Everyone wants to be the
chooser, because they don't trust themselves to be able to cut fairly !!
Well, too bad.  But most people couldn't be relied on to decide which color
had the advantage, either !  And the mere fun of having three moves to play
first, would ensure a plentiful supply of volunteers to be PLAYER ONE.

So then...... LETS HEAR IT FOR "THREE-MOVE EQUALIZATION" !!!!! 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              Bill Taylor              wft@math.canterbury.ac.nz
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Of course I'm not cheating my employer by spending 3 hours a day on the net.
     I'm just using the time I would have spent fiddling with weird games !
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: palmerd@holst.cs.unc.edu (Daniel Palmer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Very Abstract Games/Activities
Date: 21 Nov 92 16:03:23 GMT

Granted, this "game" doesn't really qualify as a game.  There is no objective and
everyone's a winner, but it is great fun.

The Sentence Game
-----------------

This is played with a group of 4-7 people with 5 being about the best.  As a group you come 
up with a "template" sentence with a number of parts of speech left out corresponding
to the number of people playing.  Example for 5:

The ________________  _________________ _________________ the __________________ ______________
      adjective           noun             transitive               noun         adverb phrase
                                             verb


Sort of an extreme extension of Mad Libs from days of yore.

Then each person comes up with a part of speech for each blank in the sentence.  An example
might be:

new-born
jackhammer
kidnapped
gerbils
in the next town

The sentence is then read aloud with successive players filling in the appropriate word.
After the first sentence, the player to the left begins and so on until everyone has started.
Sometimes the sentences just don't work, sometimes they're hysterical.  Some past results:

The bloodthirsty bag-woman choreographed the President into a tree.
The invisible barn ate peanut butter.
The compassionate cow dissected the cat slowly.


Waiting for your meal at a particularly slow resturant or long car-trips lend themselves
very nicely to this game.

In case anyone's wondering, this grew out of a conversation on attemping to come up with a 
sentence that had never been previously spoken in the history of the language.

-Dan
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: warren@wam.umd.edu (the stupid one)
Subject: Re: The Biggest Number Game
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 16:51:42 GMT

in article <1e821sINNolv@uni-paderborn.de>,
jerry@uni-paderborn.de (Gerald Siek) writes:

>If n would be the largest number that can be described
>by 20 or less words then:

>"The smallest number that cannot be described by 20 or less words"

>is obviously a description for n+1 with less than 20 words.

not at all
the fact that no number larger than n can be described in 20 words or
less does not imply that any number smaller than n can be described
in 20 words or less

however
"the largest number that can be desribed in twenty words or less plus one"
is subject to the pathology described

one must wonder if such a semantic fragment contains any more meaning than
"this is a false statement"

it has been argued that -1 is the highest integer (1,2,3,...,-3,-2,-1)
kind of like negative absolute temperatures being "hotter"
than positive ones
From: orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Pente
Date: 17 Nov 92 10:29:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Nov17.102906.11122
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR

Has anyone ever heard or, or played, a computer Pente player?

Theus (orpheus@reed.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: positron@engin.umich.edu (Jonathan Scott Haas)
Subject: Re: Othello search space (Was: World Othello Championships)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 13:58:23 EST
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <3NZ80SH@math.fu-berlin.de> guckes@math.fu-berlin.de (Sven Guckes) writes:
>
>NOP         := "Number Of Plays" function
>                Number of plays of a game according to it's rules
>NOP(Othello) =  number of moves of the game "Othello"
>
>NOP(Othello) < 3^64 = 3433683820292512484657849089281 < 3.5 * 10^30
>

Chop off over 80% of that number... the central four squares can *never*
be empty. This cuts out 65/81 of the possible positions. Wanna run *that*
one through Mathematica? :)

-- 
__/\__  Jonathan S. Haas         | Jake liked his women the way he liked
\    /  University of Michigan   | his kiwi fruit: sweet yet tart, firm-
/_  _\  positron@engin.umich.edu | fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and
  \/                             | covered with short brown fuzzy hair.
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: cet1@cus.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson)
Subject: Re: Gale's Game
Keywords: Chomp
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 12:03:51 GMT

In article <MJD.92Nov20181855@saul.cis.upenn.edu>, mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu
("[*] Jasper Titus") writes:
|> 
|>     No.  The rules of the game are exactly as follows:  (I changed your
|> numbering because it was bizarre)
|> 
|> 	1.  Choose integers M and N to be the size of your board.
|> 
|> 	2.  A legal move is a choice of integers (p, q), with 1<=p<=M
|> 	    and 1<=q<=N, and such that there's no previous move (x, y)
|> 	    with (x<=p and y<=q).
|> 
|> 	3.  If you play (1, 1), you lose.

Isn't this the game that is called Chomp in Winning Ways? The strategy-stealing
argument that the first player must have a win on a rectangular board (larger
than 1x1), posted in <DUBACH1.92Nov20223420@husc10.harvard.edu> by Joev Dubach,
is given there.

Chris Thompson
JANET:    cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx
Internet: cet1@phx.cam.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: mbrockma@bank.ecn.purdue.edu (Matt Brockman)
Subject: E-Mail Abalone Administrator
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:58:52 GMT

I am in a e-mail abalone game, but have lost
the address of the guy running it.

If anyone has it could they send it to me?

Thanks,

===============================================================================
Matt Brockman                                           mbrockma@ecn.purdue.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "While a llama may produce some of the world's finest of wools, prized
        around the world, their breath, on the other hand, could only 
            be prized somewhere in the far reaches of llama hell."
===============================================================================
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract