[RogerR]

Originally Posted by Billfred

I will argue the case for stacking, just to play devil's advocate.

Suppose Redabot can pick up tetras from the human player, then stack them. We'll say Redabot stacks three tetras. Worst case scenario, Redateam just scored nine points. If it's a row, we're talking nineteen.

Then consider Bluabot. It's a box on wheels. It also takes tetras from the human player, but it sends them underneath the goal. In order to match the scoring potential of Redabot, Bluabot will have to get those tetras under the goal three times as fast as Redabot can stack (as it would have to score nine tetras to Redabot's three to score nine points). If we assume Redabot is making rows, that speed for Bluabot balloons to roughly six times as fast in order to keep pace.

And Redabot's got the advantage of keeping at least those nine points, no matter what happens. So I'll ask the question--do you feel lucky?

but how would the score look if Bluabot played defense and blocked Redabot from scoring any tetras instead of trying to keep up with Redabot. instead of being at a six point (at least!) deficit, blaubot and redabot would break even. blaubot could conceivably cancel out a much higher scoring opponent without ever touching a tetra.