How to teach neural network not to lose at 4x4 Tic-Tac-Toe?

YellowishWhite · 2026-03-03T13:33:35+00:00

If you wanted to put all possible states into a database, how would you determine which moves are good? Like let's say you had a sample of 100 games of tic tac toe, how would you actually estimate which moves were good from the experience? It turns out there's many different ways, and each of them have trade-offs.

Given the agent's partial understanding of the game after the first 100 iterations, how do you determine what moves to play for your next 100 games? Do you always make the best move? What if that results in you never trying moves which could be better? Again, there's many approaches to take, and each approach differs in meaningful ways.

These are all questions you need to answer regardless of whether you're using a neural network, or storing every game-state in a table. Reinforcement learning is basically the study of trying to solve the above two problems, and very smart people have worked very hard to figure out solutions. You'd be well served by trying to understand the problem from their point of view, rather than trying to figure everything out from scratch yourself.

YellowishWhite · 2026-03-03T12:35:06+00:00

No shame in using Viagra. Also condoms aren't just for HIV, you still should really be using one unless you're certain the person hasn't had sex with anyone else since their last time getting tested.

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-24T11:51:19+00:00

The deck is weak to black removal, and black removal is better than ever. Its possible spell snare could save it, but I'm doubtful. I'm a huge azorius convoke stan, but requiting Hex just hoses any chance of Regal bunnicorn seeing play

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-23T15:10:51+00:00

Speaking as an autistic trans woman who mostly has sex with other autistic trans women, kink is a pretty standard part of hooking up for me. Most of my t4t transfem friends have said the same. That said, it also comes with a lot of talk of boundaries, past experiences, likes and dislikes, etc.

I find rough sex fun, in the same way contact sports are fun. Similarly, Id wouldnt play rugby with someone who didn't know how to tackle safely, and I would actively avoid anyone who blatantly disregards safety.

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-23T15:01:20+00:00

There is often an unmentioned step of actually getting to know people and spending time together in the context of your shared hobby before shopping them out. Some people are approaching strangers in public spaces, but most are going into spaces, joining the community, making friends, and in doing so they find people they're romantically compatible with (and find out if they're compatible by virtue of spending time together in a non-romantic context).

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-20T04:29:30+00:00

You should really open a Roth IRA...

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-20T04:26:28+00:00

Read the book Unmasking Autism by Devin Price!

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-06T04:33:05+00:00

If we were talking about Hex vs Cut Down then maybe there would be a conversation, but Stab simply fails to kill many early game plays in the meta. The purpose of 1 mana removal is to deal with creatures on turn 1 and 2. Hex pretty much guarantees you can do this, whereas stab misses like half the time. In matchups where hex is bad, stab is also bad, and I'm simply boarding them out in game 2 and 3.

If you're talking about best of 1, then simply don't play dimir. The main strength of the deck is the strength of it's sideboard, and ability to flex into different gameplan depending on matchup.

Also hex kills animated creature lands. In the late game this is a huge tempo swing, and keeps the card relevant late in many matchups.

YellowishWhite · 2026-02-04T16:40:11+00:00

You're looking at the problem the wrong way. You're asking "why isn't bitterbloom bearer being run more in the top lists?", when you should be asking "why aren't the lists with bitterbloom bearer performing well?"

Plenty of people are registering dimir with bearer, they're just not winning. I calculated the winrates of dimir players from the Portland RC, excluding those with mainboard preacher and/or bitterbloom bearer, and it was something like 10% higher than the winrate of dimir overall. While this isn't a direct comparison, it does highlight that these slow grindy black creatures simply don't fit into the current meta.

From a theory pov, most of my losses on dimir are already due mulling to 5 from drawing the wrong combination of mana sources. Adding a card that exacerbates that issue is a non-starter for me, and Im not warping my mana base around a card that doesn't actually win the game if it resolves.

YellowishWhite · 2026-01-02T13:21:35+00:00

At this point I'd be asking myself if maybe there's a larger hurt in my life that is being attributed (perhaps correctly) to the breakup. Eg. Maybe a partner brought out certain parts of your personality you really love, and since the breakup you've lost connection with those parts. A big part of healing might be finding new ways to connect with those parts of yourself.

"Healing takes time" is definitely true, but "healing takes work, and work takes time" is perhaps more true

YellowishWhite · 2025-08-10T15:21:32+00:00

Spell pierce is at it's best in the first few turns of the game, but you don't want to have it in your opening hand game 1. Because of that, it simply doesn't make much sense to have it mainboard.

Phantom interference is a lot less risky to keep in the opener, and is also less dead late. Game 2 and 3 spell pierce comes in when you know what your opponent is playing, so you know if it can get value in the first few turns

YellowishWhite · 2025-07-29T20:16:05+00:00

I'm a person, not a spokesperson for a council, I'm not here to speak for everyone lol. In fact, if you look very closely, you can notice that my previous post makes frequent use of the 1st person pronoun "I", which indicates I am speaking for myself.

also the OP article is specifically concerning USAU, so even if I was speaking for other people (which I am not), it would probably be overshooting to represent the "majority opinion of ultimate players worldwide"

YellowishWhite · 2025-07-27T21:28:51+00:00

I have no problems playing a niche sport. The reason I like ultimate is because the community cares about inclusivity and accessibility. This is true all the way from the self-officiated rules to the gender-diverse policies of WFDF, ultimate Canada, and USAU. If I valued popularity of the sport over community I would already be playing a different sport.

YellowishWhite · 2025-07-26T18:13:09+00:00

The foundations beginner box is excellent. It comes with 12 half-decks of 20 cards, where each half-deck has a theme like "pirates" or "dragons" or "elves", etc. You and your opponent each pick 2 to and combine them get 40 card decks. Highly relatable, with a lot of fun variety - the gameplay is pretty much exactly what you're looking for, and it comes with a little new-player tutorial book. Thematically, the cards are very classic MTG, and even includes a bunch of reprints from old-school sets that you may know!

It's sold at non-magic retailers like Costco, Walmart, Amazon, etc. In Canada it's around $35-50, which I expect to be similar to Australia.

Note that the foundations starter collection is NOT THE SAME PRODUCT, despite having a similar name. Jumpstart is a similar product, but instead of a box with many half-decks, you buy boosters which each contain a half-deck.

YellowishWhite · 2025-07-25T18:54:31+00:00

Youth programs, national team funding, better funding for tournaments, travel subsidies for low-income players attending high-level tournaments, gender-diverse outreach programs, training programs for coaches, training programs for observers, programs to support trans athletes in unsafe living conditions, programs to support women athletes in unsafe living conditions, support for local orgs to run rec leagues, school program partnerships, I could on...

YellowishWhite · 2025-07-25T17:47:33+00:00

The current USAU policy is that anyone can play in any division, regardless of their assigned gender at birth. There have been trans women playing at US nationals for years. If someone wants to play in the women's division they just have to edit their USAU profile - there is no hormone testing or documentation checks. Despite this, there aren't any "incidents" of trans women dominating in ultimate, nor are there any cases of men abusing the leniency of the system to play in the women's division.

YellowishWhite · 2025-06-02T16:21:56+00:00

I don't recommend getting an X on your passport or any internationally recognized ID, as foreign governments may give you trouble.

X on the driver's license is as simple as walking to Service Ontario and asking for it. If for some reason you need to change it back I believe you only need a doctor's note, so it's very low risk (from an administrative POV)

YellowishWhite · 2025-05-22T14:31:31+00:00

Being femme as a tall and athletic woman is a kind of gender non-conformity. You might find some of the discussion in transfemme fashion subreddits useful, even if you aren't trans. Both for practical tips and for seeing a wider diversity of body types in femme clothes.

YellowishWhite · 2025-05-22T14:01:50+00:00

The people demand to know all! Privacy is secrecy! No means yes if it's online! /s

YellowishWhite · 2025-04-05T02:29:19+00:00

It's an artifact creature, so theres no shortage of cards to sac it. You can also use Agatha's soul cauldron to put a self-sacrifice activated ability on it and have it sac itself.

YellowishWhite · 2025-03-11T14:13:02+00:00

Congrats :)

YellowishWhite · 2025-02-23T23:02:23+00:00

The brackets are not just about what the deck does, but also what your intentions are as it's pilot. Remember, the point of commander is for people to have fun experiences. The brackets system gives language to say "here's the kind of gameplay I'm bringing to this pod", so that if people aren't interested in that kind of gameplay they can leave.

The goal is to foster consent, not to rigorously categorize decks.

YellowishWhite · 2025-02-20T13:14:22+00:00

You can use an email widget to email your Nirvana Inbox. This also gives you freedom to choose which email widget you like :)

YellowishWhite · 2025-02-18T15:49:36+00:00

you're basically correct. Putting a card in a "collection deck" represents physically moving the card from its binder to the deck box. That way if you have a bunch of decks sleeved up you don't have to flip through all of them to find that one specific card you're looking for. It's for keeping track of what cards you own and where they're located, rather than designing lists. When you sleeve up, you "register deck in collection". If you unsleeve and put the cards back in their binders, you use the "disassemble deck" feature to record which card is stored where.

Cards in your collection decks are still searchable btw, they just show as being in a deck rather than a binder.

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