Improving SLRengos

Can we improve the quality of play or the interest in playing these rengos on SL?

As I see it, the primary objective of a rengo is to have fun. Serious rengos are quite difficult and almost certainly not suitable for the anonymous / free for all format we have here. I also therefore think that the 'quality of play' is difficult to improve. A comment was made on Ongoing Game 1 / What went wrong that the standard of play was poor, but that was to be expected with players ranging from 30k to 3d, and I agree.

However, there is a big difference between these SL rengos and the ones I play live. I.e. in live rengos, the same player never plays two moves in succession for the same side. (--Dieter: neither does he play on both sides ; - 7 )

This means that, in the case of a weak player making a bad move, the error will not be aggravated by him/her continuing to defend what might have been undefensible. Either the bad move will be 'helped' by a stronger player on his team, or a stronger player on his team will just ignore it and play a relevant move elsewhere.

Chances are also that a weak move will be answered by a weak opponent (playing order is fixed at the start of the game). Similarly, since a strong player will not play the follow up to his own move, he can only play moves which his team mates will 'understand'.

Whilst this does not give a higher standard of play, it does ensure that the end result is more equal and the game stays interesting for longer.

What it also does is to create several 'strange' situations and positions which are interesting.

What do the other players think of this?

Is there a way which we can try to do the SL rengos in a similar way, without losing the 'anyone can come and join us' appeal?

Just some thoughts.

MortenPahle.

No ideas for improvement. One thought though: having fun is much easier with people you know and in a private environment than in a "anonymous / free for all" format. # : - 7

--DieterVerhofstadt

I think it is a good idea if the last move may be chaged by a user. This could help bad moves but if it becomes too extreme, it will seem like the game is being played by one person, and not a group.

--Neal

Maybe we should sometimes take votes (with discussion) on some moves? Maybe two players play a game, and whenever he/she doesn't know what to do, he/she asks for opinions and votes from kibitzers, takes the advice, and moves on until the next problem?

--dnerra

I have a small observation: the numbering system that's being used in this game is very confusing! In the analysis, players refer to their moves by their "full game" move number, but in the boards, the numbers are for the "current move set". It's hard enough for us beginners to read these positions without forcing us to do arithmetic at the same time.

--Michael

Gorobei: I think the SL Rengos are scary to many of us weak players because we are afraid to mess up a game; experts probably are also irked by obviously bad plays. The SLRs are not exploiting the power of the WWW/Wiki to make a really cool group game that both teaches novices and excites experts. In a perfect world, I'd like SLRs to work as follows:

On the current board, a player can click on a point as a proposed move. He is taken to page which shows his marked play. Either this is a new page which he edits to explain why he made that move, or it is an existing page with the ongoing discussion of that move. Anyone feeling brave may promote a sub-page to the main line, in which case that becomes the next move in the game. Of course, proposed play boards also accept proposed plays.

This has the advantage that novices will be more willing to join in, teachers will more easily show why certain moves are bad, and the experts can keep the main line sane.

A complete SLR would be like an SGF file on steroids: a strong game with much discussion of alternative plays. Naturally, the main line would be one board per move, last move marked, all discussed variations/alternatives marked 'a', 'b', 'c', etc. If no variations were discussed, multiple moves would be shown on a single board. This could all be automated: no master editing would be required.

Tas: Sounds great. But someone has to program it.

Tapir: I imagine five years later someone will come and add a comment to this discussion again :) Imho this thread isn't uptodate anymore, Ongoing Game 4 was the most popular page these days and combined wide participation with fun and analysis and still was not too bad a game...