red vs blue

Lion · Guest

well in chess the advantage of white is quite explainable. Every player tries to improve his setup with every move, so as white has one move more half of the time he generally has a better setup.

In Stratego you make your setup before you start, and you don't really know whether an initial move makes your setup better or worse. (it does of course in the endplay, but then the influence from who started is already neglectable I would say).

I just don't see a reason why either blue or red has an advantage in Stratego other than site-related things like who picks the options or psychological things like "I don't like this colour I have, let me kill all my own pieces".

Blue has the advantage of seeing where his opponent starts, but if red moves his first move back he sees already the first 2 moves of his opponent and is still in initial position, with the only information given away of 1 moving piece that could be a scout on a bomb side or a colonel on an attack side.

Red has a clear advantage when flag marshal or spy is on the first row and you plan to move a piece in front of it to cover it, but how often does that happen? Besides, blue can easily make a just as strong or better strategy without such piece on front row.

I still think that such stat would lose it's value if it turns out that the better player picks red 60% of the time.
Just games in which a highly-favorite player wins have no value on the advantage of the colour because there is simply a much stronger influence of skill that decided the game. It won't make a difference on the stat anyway, if in these games blue and red are equally divided. Only if top players have a preference to red this will be filtered out.

Actually I'm just trying to find an explanation of why red does NOT have an advantage, because I can't see an explanation of why it DOES have. Convince me

Lion · Guest

hmmm, how did that become a new topic? I gotta sleep LOL

Warhero_POW · User Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 42 Location: Owensboro, KY

I would like to play you. You can even choose the color you would like to be sir.

kentinator · User Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 37

I think that there may be some setups you may use that you would want to move first - similarly there may be some setups your opponent has where it would also be a benefit to move first against it. The same could be said for moving second.
However, all things being equal I don't think there is an advantage in moving first in Stratego.
I have often wanted to note in each game I played, whether my opponent made the first move on the same side as the flag, or opposite, and compile the statistics to see if there was a pattern.

-deleted129 · Posted: 26.09.2003 22:50 Post subject: Red wins more because:

Players who play a lot (more games = more experience) often got the client installed

So their Strategoboard pops up earlier then peeps without client (less experienced because they don't play much?! And aren't worldclass?!?!?)

The player who enters the game first will choose most of the time red. (Player number ONE)

Or is it just me? As I enter the game as second I get the blue pieces for, lets say 80% of the time......?

Or is this fact to stupid to mention?

Luc
(I really don't give a d*nm which colour)
_________________
S t r a t e g o - C l u b - N a p o l e o n