Compiling a list of openings

[Hagbard]

Very interesting list of openings, Roderich created.

For identifying and analysing different opening moves and responses to these, would it be an idea to "normalize" the moves to the first quadrant of the board (a1-a6-f6-f1) ?

As a hnefatafl board is eight-fold symmetric, fx. the opening moves d1-d3, h1-h3, a4-c4, a8-c8, k4-i4, k8-i8, d11-d9 and h11-h9 are in fact identical.

[Kratzer]

Very interesting list of openings, Roderich created.

For identifying and analysing different opening moves and responses to these, would it be an idea to "normalize" the moves to the first quadrant of the board (a1-a6-f6-f1) ?

As a hnefatafl board is eight-fold symmetric, fx. the opening moves d1-d3, h1-h3, a4-c4, a8-c8, k4-i4, k8-i8, d11-d9 and h11-h9 are in fact identical.

Thank you for your suggestion. In fact, I've already normalized them in my way some time ago (I chose h1h3 as standard opening because most of us used it excessively whereas d1d3 for example was really really rare, must be something psychological, I guess ^^). I just wanted to keep the moves for the overview exactly as they were played (the authentic game). Maybe I should just add another column for the normalized moves ... yeah, I think I'm gonna do that!

Good idea, your 0-0-draw-system, this is really something to consider! I'm curious about what the other guys will say.

[crust]

hello tafl heads
re: notation
I suspect most people play h1 - h3 because they are right-handed: it would be interesting to correlate the data with right-handedness of players... The vikings put the rudder (steerboard) on the right hand side of the ship because they were mostly right-handed, hence the "starboard" side and of course they had to put the left hand side of the ship ("the port side") up against the quayside, so as not to bugger up the steerboard. This is completely irrelevant! Anyway, d1 - d3 just feels odd, because it's a sort of left-handed opening. But it makes sense to normalize notation in this way, and treat the a1 corner as the main reference point. Makes sense to notate Millar gambit as e5 - e2.
crust

[Hagbard]

The vikings put the rudder (steerboard) on the right hand side of the ship because they were mostly right-handed

I appreciate that the vikings would choose to normalize to the board quadrant in the rudder steerboard side!
The A1-quadrant is just the mathematician's way -

[arne64]

Is it possible to organise the game database so players can see which moves where played the most and which lead to wins.
An example from chess would be: http://www.365chess.com/opening.php?m=5 ... 4.c5.c3.e5

[Hagbard]

Is it possible to organise the game database so players can see which moves where played the most and which lead to wins.

I believe a statistics could be made with this theme, would be interesting. Though probably necessary to take with a grain of salt:
whatever favourite opening move a very strong player would have, would seem to be a winning move.

[arne64]

You should compare only games played by the strongest players or by equally rated players. There is no such player who always wins.

[Brench]

Hi all! I'm new here and very curious about the theory underlying different kinds of Hnefatafl.

In my real life, I'm a data scientist and 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've seen openings mentioned on the forum, but haven't been able to find any systematic analysis. Before I step on someone's feet though, I did want to make sure this wasn't already handled somewhere...

[Hagbard]

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

It is not yet.

[Hagbard]

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/tafl_openings.txt

Hope it can be of use.