TheMerrillShow

Ever play Stratego?  After chess, it is my favorite board game.

Not to explain the whole game… but each player sets up four rows of pieces however she wishes.  This set up is known only to the player because all the pieces look the same from the opposing player’s view.  Different pieces move in different ways, they have different ranks, and when one piece challenges another for a square, the two battling pieces reveal themselves and the lower ranked piece is removed from the board.  The goal is to capture the opposing player’s flag.

In chess, all information is known.  There is no hiding, no bluffing.  Not so with Stratego; bluffing and deception are very much part of the game, something that would make “The Art of War” author Master Sun-Tzu proud.

I would play at a friend’s house and was so confident in my setup, I would show him my one setup and use it every game.  He had all information, I had some, and I think I still won a decent number of times.  I finally played his father with my fabled initial setup (he didn’t know what it was) and he took me to town.  Afterwards, he told me what he did and what I did:

• I moved most of my pieces through the game, such as to give some hint of what type they were and suggest where my flag was.
• He moved ONLY his first two rows, so I had no idea what half his force was, and was thus cautious in attacking.  I also had no clue as to his flag location.

It wasn’t bluffing.  It wasn’t deception.  It was plainly not sharing information – and it worked.  Coming from the world of chess where every piece is fully visible to all if you choose to look at the whole board and it’s purely a battle of wits, this particular Art of War is still something I am learning.

I prefer to act from full and objective information, and relish in finding/making such resources.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 11:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.