Perfect Renju and Free Renju - 五子棋

Perfect Renju enables part of variants by rule and Free Renju allows all the variants let players decide. Of course, they are mathematically the same just what is the "enough time" to know the conclusions of all variants.

Truly, Perfect Renju is also an option. There are many this kind of games: Chess, International Chess, and Renju by current RIF rule. In these games, most players know almost all the conclusions of all variants. However, it is still very playable for humans and never underestimates how to learn these conclusions. People may use psychological tricks, gambling styles, and etc to get more wins in this kind of games. As an example in current Renju, people try some other weaker variants to avoid dull draws
and try to have a better chance for win.

On the other hand, in Free Renju before the "enough time" reaches, humans do not know the conclusions of all variants or say people only know rough conclusions of some variants. It looks like street fighting but surely no body will get hurt in brain game of Free Renju. Of course, it gets many uncertainties in the first few years when original Renju players try it. However, it is also true that human can play it very well. For example, only three stones are put in Rule 10 and humans really have ability to
judge it. Also in Rule 25, humans are able to find a move not get easily lose for both sides. Surely, it has no big problem for beginners, please see Lu's and Tarannikov's comments for examples.

Now, we are going to pick up new rule but do not forget why we want to change. For many Perfect style games, Chess and International Chess, they have no choices since beginners will not take them as the same game when adding pieces. But in Renju, it is true beginners will consider them as the same game no matter which opening rule even in other sizes of broads. And actually, we use very similar skills to play for different opening rules. In addition, same games of Renju "look" very similar but same
games of Chess and International Chess "look" totally different.

It is not very wise to change opening rules when we get stagnations every time. Therefore, it is about the choice of most Renju fans. I will keep play Renju if most people choose Perfect Renju. But we should know we do have choices and we can try to make plan for that.

I have a small test for you. Yesterday, I spent more than three hours to analyze a meaningless variant in current RIF rule.
h8+i9+i6+h9+i10
When you see somebody analyze this position very seriously, will you join? You answer will give you some hints about what is Renju for you.

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It is interesting to post a modified Renju rule introduced by Nakamura in English. Player who plays "pass" early win the game if that game is draw.



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