Re: Re: Mancala solved!

[kwzh-home@gnu.org (Karl Heuer)]

>>but it is not good to know a perfect player exists. 
>>I hope it does not destroy the game.
>
>Is problem to change rules ? No ! I think, the best change is play on
>14 fields (instead of 12). 

Firstly, since the game is "solved" with a massive lookup table, I
don't see it destroying the game, or having any effect on this server.
Maybe it's now possiblbe for someone to cheat by accessing that table,
but it's *always* been possible to cheat by using a program, and it
doesn't take a "perfect" program to be able to defeat any human.

Secondly, there are thousands of mancala variants.  Has anybody even
checked whether the one that was solved is the same game as implemented
on this server?

If someone wants to implement some of the known variants, that would be
fine; but I see no reason to invent a new one just to avoid the non-problem
of the solved game.