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Joost Brugh wrote on Sun, May 21, 2006 01:58 AM UTC:
I don't know. But I got my ass kicked by Zillions several times. But I
don't know any DVONN tactics, so probably it is just a sign that I'm
still not good at it.

My ZRF is built with the idea that the only things that matter for a stack
are its size, its owner and whether or not a DVONN-piece is in there. I
didn't bother about stacks larger than 25 (because they and larger stacks
are equally immobile and equally winning when surviving). Rules like the
'No move with enclosed pieces' are trivial to implement. After each
move, an administrator (?-player) must remove all disconnected pieces.

I used a pass-detector that detects when players pass. Then I create dummy
pieces to make high stacks count for that many pieces and then carefully
trigger the count-condition.

But I think that the maximum height of a stack is more than 25. Take the
leftmost positions as building position. Then try to get stacks with
heights 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. on positions on the center row. From four other
positions, stacks can directly be moved to the target. Still, I don't
think the answer is 49 (or 46 for a DVONN-less stack), but probably they
are close.

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Sun, May 21, 2006 12:51 AM UTC:
Joost, You have made a difficult question. Not answer yet. Are you trying a
zrf?. It does not look a hard job, stacked pieces are, each one, a piece
with a particular movement, the difficult task is that Zillions can play
it decently, I have my doubts. There are not many free (or not) DVONN
programs around, I have found only one, in French. Follow the link:
http://www.nivozero.com/

Joost Brugh wrote on Wed, May 17, 2006 01:50 PM UTC:
A problem for the real mathematician about DVONN: How high can a stack
maximally grow in the game when:
a. The stack contains one or more DVONN-pieces (so it will survive by
definition)
b. The stack contains no DVONN-pieces
bi. The stack dies later in the game by becomming disconnected
bii. The stack gets a DVONN-piece later in the game (and thus survives)
biii. The stack survives without getting a DVONN-piece

Some one-dimensional examples. Assume these lines as isolated islands: A
number is a stack without DVONN-piece, X is a high, immobile stack without
DVONN-piece, D is a single DVONN-piece.
bi: X - 1 - D. The singleton has to move and stack X dies. It can only
become X+1 upon dying. The X+1-stack never really lived.
bii: X - 1 - D - 1. The stack can only be saved by using the rightmost
singleton to put the DVONN-piece on the stack and it can grow to X+3 with
a DVONN-piece, but had highest size X without DVONN-piece.
biii: X - 2 - D. The stack stays connected and survives.

Note that White and Black play together to get the high stack. But the
rules must be obeyed. The problem can be simplified by disregarding one or
movre rules.

Could there be a systematic way to solve this problem.

This is not for making a ZRF. I already made an ugly ZRF in which I used
25 as maximum, becuase when higher stacks are brought back to 25, the same
moves are possible and the outcome (win/loss/draw) will always be the same.
Only the point difference can be different.

Roberto Lavieri wrote on Wed, Apr 5, 2006 12:51 AM UTC:
DVONN is not a chess variant, but it is a very interesting and deep game,
very different from other known strategic games, and the rules are
extremely simple. You don´t need purchase the game to take a first look,
you can play it just using coins or disks with three colors and you can
draw by-hand a primitive board on a paper, as I did. Making a ZRF looks
easy, I´m not sure I´m going to do that, because  my time is limited in
this times, but I can´t discard the project, perhaps in a couple of weeks.
DVONN is a copyrighted game, and by this reason I´m not going to distribute
the ZRF, in the case I take the project seriously. For the rules, you can
find it in many places in Internet.

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