Board Game Arena

Is there any rules about copying moves between two games in strategy games.

That is if you play two 2 player games where you have opposite colours in those games, then you can copy your opponents moves from one game to the other. In effect your two opponents play each other across two boards, or if both opponents are the same they end up playing them-self. So as long as the game isn't a draw you can be guaranteed at least one win out of the pair of games.

I can't remember if there is a name for this, but it's certainly well known and was used previously as a trick for example in https://en.chessbase.com/post/derren-br ... th-feeling

Its a very well known trick. It is why in simultaneous display games the player always plays as the same side, to prevent this.

Much like a compact or other trick based on manipulating the overall meta-game it would like fall foul of the general moderation of BGA, and proving it would be remarkably easy. But its also a trick of quite limited value. If you are a fairly weak player you could use it on your first few games - where both pairs of opponents will have significantly higher Elo, to boost your Elo, but the effect would be short lived. If you have a higher Elo than both your opponents you would actually lose points doing this.
There is a very similar trick you can do by learning to play for a draw, since a draw will boost your Elo against a stronger player.

While not explicitly said in the rules, I would deem this "use of an engine".

Using a solver/engine/bot to play the game for you is cheating, and since you copy the moves of another player, you are in fact using that other player as a (biological) bot/engine, doing the thinking for you.

(personal opinion)

RobertBr wrote: ↑30 May 2022, 11:21 Its a very well known trick. It is why in simultaneous display games the player always plays as the same side, to prevent this.

That makes sense to me

RobertBr wrote: ↑30 May 2022, 11:21 Much like a compact or other trick based on manipulating the overall meta-game it would like fall foul of the general moderation of BGA, and proving it would be remarkably easy.

Well I suppose one could prove that the game was copied up until the current move very easily, you just look at the two boards, but that doesn't say that the game will definitely continue to the end in the same fashion, without knowing the intent of the opponent. Having to wait out a game for possibly 100-200 moves like that to prove copying, imagine a pace of 1 move per day in correspondence (turn-based) for example, would be quite tedious.

There's a legitimate trick in Go, although annoying to some players, to mirror the opponents moves through the center point of the board for example. In theory it can be countered, and it shouldn't work, but clever players might use it to mirror until their opponent makes a move they think they could improve upon and then choose to break the mirror.

So one could imagine claiming the same - I'm copying my opponent until they make a mistake and then I'll play the better move on the other board. It would be a dull game up until that point though.

RobertBr wrote: ↑30 May 2022, 11:21 but the effect would be short lived.

I suppose that's also true, so one could just try to ignore it, or resign such games, and choose not to play with an opponent you think might do it, maybe.

voriki wrote: ↑30 May 2022, 12:00 While not explicitly said in the rules, I would deem this "use of an engine".

Using a solver/engine/bot to play the game for you is cheating, and since you copy the moves of another player, you are in fact using that other player as a (biological) bot/engine, doing the thinking for you.

(personal opinion)

I suppose that could be another way to look at it or interpret such rules of assistance or engine use.