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Old 07-17-2009, 03:33 AM   #4
trgeoff
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 111
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Here's my post about rcr on Little Golem


http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum...m=40&topic=102


"Reversi enthusiasts may be interested in "Reversi Chain Reaction" - a new form of Reversi that I have introduced on the the gaming site, wifight (mostly Palm-based, but also Windows). It was coded up by site developer, Brennan.

It's a simple and logical extension of normal Reversi, so natural in fact that I was surprised to find it does not seem to have been tried before. The only difference is that discs that are flipped as per a normal Reversi move can cause further flips as part of that move, if they now trap one or more of the opponent's discs, and so on. Thus a normal Reversi move can set off a powerful "chain reaction" of flips that spreads across the existing array of discs. These reactions can be especially dramatic later in the game. The record so far for a change in "status" in a single turn is 83 (e.g. from having 21 discs less than the opponent to having 52 more).

I'm no Reversi expert so I have no idea how it compares with the original for advanced play. Likewise we have no advanced players on wifight who can assess it from an expert's point of view. However, it has been very popular since it was introduced, in fact twice as much as the original. It is definitely exciting! It seems to require quite different strategy to normal Reversi, with the edges and corners assuming even greater importance than is usual. There can be quite prolonged battles over the diagonals, with a near-complete diagonal sometimes reversing color many times in alternate moves.

It would be great if a couple of Little Golem Reversi experts could try it out and share their thoughts on it.

Using the link below you can also follow what I think has been my most exciting game to date, with lots of wild and crazy swings, especially from turn 40 or so onwards.

http://wifight.com/games/reversi-rcr...d8c0314d80f64a


Maybe some of LG's mathematicians might also be able to explain something that (surprisingly to me anyway) makes the game possible in the first place: that the final outcome of a chain reaction is independent of the sequence of flipping. In a complicated reaction, in addition to the primary sequence of flipping (i.e. flipping as per a normal Reversi move), there may be secondary, tertiary, etc sequences of flipping. Extensive testing on a physical Reversi board showed that it it does not matter if one completes each order of sequence in turn, or whether one "mixes and matches" them as it were. It is a bit like coloring in an outline drawing - you can start and finish anywhere you want - the picture will still get filled in. In playing the game, predicting the final outcome on a board with many discs might seem tricky at first but it quickly becomes intuitive.

cheers

geoff"
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