Hnefatafl forum

maybe we should just make different ratings for each variants and display them in a different menu. ... I would also suggest to give only a k-factor of 16 (the half) if the player played a basic amount of games. Between Grandmasters in chess a k-factor about 10 is used. We have to fast changes if j...

And here's the largest cluster, about 47% of examined records fit into the cluster. So the diagram shows that d1-d3 is the most winning opening move of Copenhagen Hnefatafl 11x11? And the two most successfull answers are e5-e2 and f4-c4? And the most used and successful third move is f2-i2 (probabl...

I was interested in maybe using some moderately advanced statistical techniques to cluster similar openings from the game archives and assign win probabilities to each opening. I extracted the first four moves from all games between strong players for the most used variants: http://aagenielsen.dk/t...

On preventing that a game is stuck in repetitions. Repetitions were discussed at length in 2012. Here just a few comments. If repetitions were to be counted as repetitions of full board positions, and the player to lose were to be he who first entered this particular board position, then this way o...

Brench wrote:I did want to make sure this wasn't already handled somewhere...

It is not yet.

Game haphazardness. When a game variant seemingly is well balanced (game balance near 1), theoretically the fine balance can have another cause than the game working well. Imagine some completely uncontrollable game, where the outcome is like throwing a dice. The "game balance" of such a game would...

Does this include Tournament games ? If so it will be biased towards those game types for which you have run competitions ! Yes, both championship and test tournaments. However, only variants which were found to work, are counted. Fx. ten tawlbwrdd setups were tested, but only three worked fine, an...

its obvious to me it needs something to shake it up now and again to avoid stagnations. Berserk taking and jumping knights could be a direct way to get things moving along, given enough of these special pieces on the board. The Adam Bartley setup of Alea 19x19 was tried out in a couple of test game...

Which board sizes and which game types have been more popular during the latest two years? Board size 7x7. Brandubh 946 games Ard Ri 122 Magpie 213 Total 1281 Board size 9x9. Saami 610 Sea battle 72 Total 682 Board size 11x11. Copenhagen 3047 Fetlar 133 Berserk 182 Tawlbwrdd 692 Sea battle 85 Total...

January 16th I attended in the Historical Association a most fascinating lecture about the early medieval Icelandic Manuscripts with the Viking sagas, given by an associate professor from the Iceland University institute in Reykjavik responsible for the manuscripts. The manuscripts are on UNESCO's l...