Minesweeper Opening Strategy: The Classical
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2024
- Here it is! the first video about minesweeper openings.
A little thing that I dont mention in the video: what I say here refers to the "EXPERT" difficulty. Optimal moves in different difficulties may differ.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:30 The Classical
03:17 Different Approaches
08:00 How to play "The Best" Approach
10:16 How to play "The Solver's" Approach
Special thanks to MSCoach, without his engine this video would not have been possible
here's a link to the solver's page: github.com/DavidNHill/JSMines...
And thanks to Lorenzo de Angeli for helping me with the background music: / @lorenzodeangeli4654
Find me on minesweeper.online:
minesweeper.online/player/149...
Hope you enjoy it!
Any feedback is very much appreciated, thanks! :) 
Игры
Did I just click on a minesweeper theory video despite not having played minesweeper in a decade?
Yes. I was not disappointed. High quality game theory here.
My opening strategy is to click on a mine first move.
what kind of goofy ahh minesweeper are you playing
@@mystifoxtechkamikazesweeper
@@MagnogenI am playing negative minesweeper. The negative mines implode instead of explode. Sometimes there’s 0 tiles and that could mean that you place negative and positive mines to balance it out.
Shut up and take my like
@@JDRed117no I’m not gonna shut up
This is like memorizing openings in chess lol. Also explain why starting in the corner is best
I think because there are less tiles surrounding a tile in a corner
And because there are less tiles surrounding it, you have a better chance of getting a blank tile, which is immensely helpful
It's because the game often comes down to unsolvable positions in the corner making winning basically a series of 50/50 guessing games at the very end.
Not at all. In my experience, it's better to start away from the corners.
Expert Minesweeper seems like single player chess
i once clicked my second move right in to an 8 square, that was the highlight of my year, i still use it as screen saver...
:D
its the little things in life :D
I clicked on this video expecting anti-ship cruise missiles and 125mm smoothbore guns. Instead, what I got was a world-class explanation of minesweeping strategies. 10/10. youtube surprised me again.
I'm never gonna play minesweeper in any competitive sense but I defiantly will watch any video you make on it
I don't how youtube managed to finally figure out to recommend me a Minesweeper dedicated channel but I'm glad you exist
Finally Mine Buoy drops a new video. New format, new graphic, better audio...big up!
I had no idea Minesweeper had a competitive side. I found that the hard way while getting banned for testing my python bot lol. For context I obviously didn't play against someone, or farmed rating points intentionally
That's pretty funny tbh
I think hacker culture should give you the right to surprise (and possibly anger) people just once if you hand-crafted an automated solver.
In other words, I think craftiness should be recognized and tolerated by society as long as it isn't abused.
Of course if it was just a low effort copy-paste job, it doesn't count.
@@teenspirit1 it wasn't copy paste. I did it from scratch, it was pretty fun
That’s scummy. As long as you make it clear you’re using a bot and not using it for records I don’t see why they should ban you.
@@ThisIsntARUclipsr I think they should make it more clear that you are not allowed to cheat or give at least a warning before banning. Or maybe I should've read the rules idk. I don't mind it though, there are other sites. It's kinda funny that I got banned right after I finished implementing and tested all the optimizations and algorithms that I had in mind, perfect timing
Now we just need fancy names for all the possibilities and we'll have cool chess openings. The one in this video may be King's Indian Opening: Four Mines Attack Variation
Can't wait to play the London system: Nuclear mine variation in my minesweeper game.
I never thought I'd watch a whole 11 min video of minesweeper, not talkin about general ways to win, but about a single specific start that has a 6% chance of happening, but the choice of classical piano music in the background and the way you talk man it got me really hooked idk why
I didn't even know "minesweeper online" was a thing, with leaderboards and everything. Thank you for the insight!
S A M E EEE
I avoid this problem by clicking in the middle. Am truly ahead of my time.
You fool! Why not just reset and and try again! Why try and jump the gap when you can just go around?
The Chad move is to just spam click the middle
2:31 wow, what a fucking cool visual sequence, well done. It’s those little touches of artistry in even the small things that I love the most about many of my favorite creators.
I tend to play "deterministic" variants of Minesweeper which allow you to play fully deterministically and not have to rely on probability, by doing one of a few things (always rearranging mines in the background so you succeed when you don't have any safe tiles OR guaranteed flaggable tiles that you didn't flag)
Yes, me too. I absolutely hate having to guess in a logic game.
I don't know if it exists. But this is the first visually engaging mine-sweeper content I've seen. Your delivery is great, the music is well picked and serves the delivery. Really great video.
When playing Minesweeper, I never start in a corner. As a newbie, I usually started with the corners, but quickly stopped doing that. It seems that I get a better success rate by starting near the centre of the board.
I've never seen Minesweeper inspected like this. Apparently you are doing something right since YT recommended this video after hearing us talk about minesweeper... Minesweeper Tetris.
I finally know the exact move to make when I’m in that guessing spot!
I don’t start in the corner-
OH MY GOD MY PROFILE PICTURE
this was pretty interesting, and I don't even play minesweeper except extremely casually
Since I was young I had always wondered if there was in depth statistical analysis of Minesweeper like this. Now at 33, I've finally found it :D
33 watching youtube with an anime pfp
@@fivr. yeah, #1 rule of being a tranny is all your internet pfps have to be an anime girl, literally first page of the rulebook, sorry I but I don't make the rules!
@@fivr. What a strange thing to say, like what's it supposed to be? Usually, it's photos of something someone likes, a graphic, memes, art, interest, etc. I'm more than a decade younger than 33 but you'll still enjoy what you like as you age and find things
@@overgrownghost if ur interested in anime as a 33 year old man, ur weird asl and probably poor
Hahahaha 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
what is the appeal of this version of the game for hardcore minesweeper enthusiasts when I know for a fact there are variants that generate 100% mathematically solvable configurations? if you play minesweeper enough to be knowledgeable about these kind of odds, surely you must have wasted cumulative hours of your life on frustrating losses by RNG
I can think of a bunch of reasons, but to start with
I'd have to state that this is the original minesweeper which most people are familiar with, in the same way that people play super mario instead of a later game. It involves knowledge they grew up with, rather than more recent technology.
However, I'm sure that wouldn't be the greatest contributer.
I'd say that the main reason would be that having guarenteed solvable puzzles skips a fundamental decision in minesweeper. The decision of "do i need to take a risk or not?", if the puzzle is guarenteed solvable, you would look for however long it took to find the correct move, and in minesweeper in particular, there usually is a human way to figure that out.
Building upon that. Once a player has decided to take a risk, whether right or wrong, they then need to offhand calculate the most rewarding move to make, which is literally the entire point of this video. Taking into account the entire state of the board, which can be complex in the early and middle game.
Lastly without such settings, there would be no leaderboard, and no way to rank people by minesweeper ability. Simply put, all the top players would have 100% winrate, i guarentee it. (speed would still be ranked)
I wanted to state that it's unlikely that in the middlegame, of an unsafe position, that it would be calculable for a human to know the best move with certainty . In a similar way to chess, However, I myself am not a high ranking minesweeper player, so I don't know how much water this holds
@@corpserule1582 So, long story short, there's an appeal to both versions:
Without guessing, it becomes a puzzle.
With guessing, it becomes a game.
It all boils down to which one you prefer.
really well made video
this is like chess theory, but for a much simpler game that I actually understand and play. Please do more of this!
How is it related to chess?
@@sebastianbardon391 it's quite like analyzing lines of chess openers, except in this case we assume probability rather than an opponent making their own optimal move.
@@PracticalPotato So the only similarity is that both have lines.. chess is orders of magnitude more complex than ms.
@@sebastianbardon391 he literally said "but for a much simpler game that I actually understand and play"... no need to be an elitist.
@@PracticalPotato I replied to you. And I'm sorry if it came across as elitist, I enjoy playing both games. However, I still don't see the similarity. You can analyze lines in all sorts of tactical games. This feels more like doing math.
Back in school we used to speedrun minesweeper on our school ipads. We did not have any strategy and just did it for fun, keeping track of record using screenshots and aridropping them throughout the school
ah yes, a great explanation of how to not kaboom before sleep sounds very good
The problem with the website is that the game mechanics have been set in a way that encourage the purchase (or grinding) of tokens to purchase hints to be able to compete.
In essence the website doesn't provide the authentic Minesweeper we know.
If you go and see the world record, the person who has the #1 world record for mastery has used 47 hints.
"sKiLl"
yeah that is a bit lame, but after playing one event you should be good for a long time. By the way, there are people better at mastery than me that managed to get 54 mastery without using any hint (Scar). Still, you're right that people that can just throw money at the website are advantaged even tho not so much imo. If you don't like that you could compete with Scar for the mastery no-hints record :) I'd say that is a more prestigious record than the mastery one
@@MineBuoy I’m actually trying to do a no hint mastery record. It’s gonna take time though. I remember minesweeper to be more forgiving in the openings, but on this website, it feels like I hit a mine on the second click quite too often, which really bothers me. It feels like I’m playing a different game.
minesweeper online manages the make minesweeper way more fun then it should be
I didn't even realize I had to know this and I haven't even played minesweeper in years. I love this video!
Aiming for winrate instead of speed or 'requires no guessing password' is a really interesting take on the game, and one I'm surprised I haven't thought about before since I think winrate/streaking in traditional roguelikes is a really important skillset.
Maybe I'll try it sometime... There's clearly way more skill in guessing than I considered.
(One other varient I did try is 'Density' where you add more mines to Expert and try to win once. I got to 120 and gave up before I got a 125.)
I'd love to see how this analysis holds for situations where same thing happens later in the game, where there the mine density is different and also border conditions might apply.
The bit after 2:30 is just masterful video composition. It is inspired. Well done sir, good show. I can only imagine the effort it took to edit it.
Was watching an Aliensrock video, commented on how good his editors have gotten and immediately thought about your video. Just thought you might like to know that when I think about good editing, my brain uses your video as the example.
Wow great video! Also you other videos are really helpful. Looking forward to more as I’m just getting into minesweeper.
This is the best video Ive ever watched. Please do not stop 🙏
My brain is slowly leaking out of my ears lol
Just yesterday i thought that nearly every game has a compedative community, even tetris, so why not Minesweeper and now i've found this video.
I find it weird that people think it's so improbable that Tetris has a competitive community
It's the second most sold game of all time, only behind Minecraft
I haven't thought about minesweeper in depth ever in my life, but I have thought of many other puzzles and games, and I have programmed bots for them. I suppose there are bots that play Minesweeper very well. For instance, MCTS (Monte Carlo tree search) with a neural network trained through reinforcement learning in the style of AlphaZero should do wonders here. If this doesn't exist, I might give it a try. It sounds like a very fun project.
please do!! Any advancement made to minesweeper engines/AIs that push the expert winrate past 41% are a dream of mine come true!
Wow, I don't think you would need such a complex model to solve minesweeper, with just a heuristic I think you're fine to go.
Im so happy to finally find content analyzing the dept of minesweeper! 😎
Got a new sub 🍷
Wonderful. Subbed and hoping for more like this. Minesweeper Theory is very close to my heart.
Such high quality content! Thank you.
Didn't know there was Minesweeper opening theory.
ive always found myself doing the newbie or the crafty. thank you, ill certainly try out these other strategies!!
this makes me wonder about that corner pick from the 5, 8% tiles.
I remember I had checked it. But it was pretty bad so I didnt include it in the final analisys. Very hard to get progress with that move
Very excited for more videos like this! I don't usually play minesweeper but this is actually really interesting. Also when you talked about world records I thought maybe you could do one of those world record history videos for minesweeper, I think that would be interesting.
Great video! I haven't played it in years but I want to again after seeing this!
Once again RUclips algorithms are a miracle!
I wish I could know which of my watched videos lead me here)
I would love to see more of this content!
This is going to blow up
Hehe
💥
This video is incredible, please do more of it! Instasubscribed.
Nice! I never considered the possible moves after my next move. Always just thinking about the current probabilities
This is good quality. Keep it up
Great Video, would love to see more analysis type Videos.
Un italiano!! Sono stra contento di aver trovato questo video, mi sono sempre chiesto se esistesse uno studio serio di statistica per minesweeper (lo stavo quasi per fare io), credo che sia un aspetto underrated di questo gioco e vorrei anch'io raggiungere un mastery alto come il tuo :))
The algorithm recommended this video to me, keep going and the channel will blow up!
Sharing this with my friends. This video is crazy.
I enjoyed the video very much, thank you!
Congratulations🎉 you broke the algorithm! Way to go!
please make more minesweeper analysis this is fantastic
I was waiting for the punchline, my bad, keep up ur content friend on the internet!
Underrated content, keep it up.
in the first game after seeing this video i encountered the 121, tried the solver approach, got a lucky 1 and proceeded to win the game :)
It would be interesting to analyze if the newbie approach is still worse than the crafty approach once you account for the fact that you might be avoiding a 50:50 if you click in the corner. Even if it is, my guess is that unless you're optimizing for completion hard, newbie is better based on time lost solving until you reach the other corner if there is a 50:50.
Something else that is kinda nice: The better the moves get, the more they rely on playing perfectly later on in order to actually make use of their theoretical value.
Newbie/Crafty: Opening/"Opening" or bust
The Best: Easy and somewhat probable continuation if you get a 1, but some bad intuitive continuations if you don't (like clicking the "crafty" square if you get a 2). Need to study lines or invest hints to really maximize potential.
The Solver: Literally only one mine combination (using the max amount of mines) in the area with nonzero info that gives you an opening and guarantees progress. Otherwise, a highly nontrivial rabbit hole.
I love youtube algorithm. A really good video man, keep it up!
Very clear explanation!💪🏻
May i ask why are pros start at the corners at the first place?
We don't always, but when we go for winrate, we do!
Corners have the highest chance to give you an opening (and therefore a foothold in the game) - least amount of adjacent squares that could contain a mine and ruin the fun.
Great video! Thanks for the soft shoutout ;) I would be interested to see your take on how often to take the computer line. I often don't, because the computer's choice for guessing are sometimes almost impossible to know. In the opening you outlined here, I will always take the third approach. But, I also don't use hints anymore, so I can't know those really weird computer guesses on those rare games!
If you play enough games with the objective of getting good mastery, you'll notice that there are a handful of openings that happen about 20-30% of the time. Of those significant openings I think that this one is one of the few in which I "disagree" with the solver. But I will be covering more in the future :)
only 5.1k views? damn, youve got a lot of potential, this is a great video!
i dont play minesweeper, But i watched the whole video!
I've been doing the crafty for a long time so cool to see that my game can improve even if I'm not shooting for world records
Non mi aspettavo un video su campo fiorito da un italiano, ma la sorpresa è ben accetta!
Your use of classical music (especially Bach) is really awesome and the video ending with the c minor fugue from the 1st book is just perfect, also is that Gould playing?
no, its not. just a guy playing at the same speed as him :P
Literally every time I tried to learn to play mine sweeper;
ok I'll just find a few empty spaces...
*Click, Click*
aaaand I'm dead.
I like to play Minesweeper from time to time and it's so annoying when the end of my game is a 2x2 with 2 mines left and no way to tell which way the mines are oriented. It just turns what was a fun game into a 50/50 guess right at the end
and the mine is always on the tile i pick
Nice channel you got here!
Also yass, 54 mastery club :D
I kind of agree with the solver for cases where the third click in best strategy reveals the 2. (8m42s mark) The tile right bellow the two is slightly better odds of not containing a mine, and while it's not as good for progress on that click, if you reveal a 2 or higher, it almost guarantees that the tile author suggested going for is going to be safe. So you effectively get two shots at making progress for a single risk.
A video for this old game? Old but Gold
Wine only gets better over years.
I mean Tetris competition is going strong to this day.
It's nice to hear the prelude and fugue in c minor as opposed to the much more popular c major
tho c minior is still pretty popular
So, you prefer the minor, huh? 🤨
I thought I recognised the Subject line at the end of the video. Thanks for mentioning the key of the fugue
Of course there is a channel dedicated to Minesweeper.
More of this stuff please 🙏
Here before 1k ❤ good luck
I haven't played this game since I was 5 why in God's name am I here
I started learning minesweeper few days ago and its interesting
Same.
Nice BGM!
really good video :3
This is great content thanks
Here before the channel explodes “pun intended”
Just love the fact that you chose Bach fugue in c minor as your background music. It fits really well!
*mentions key to sound smart*
Aprendi a jugar hace algunos años, ahora veo que me queda mucho por aprender
Interesting analysis! My friend, have you ever played Demoncrawl? I feel like you would really enjoy this game - it is a roguelike version of Minesweeper which uses items to reduce randomness, but at the same time increases difficulty by requiring you to survive for multiple consecutive maps in a campaign/short adventure structure. It has great presentation and very relaxing music as well. In my opinion it is one of the most slept on games of the last 5 years and I'd highly recommend it if you like classic Minesweeper.
Demoncrawl: based
Demoncrawl music: FUCKING M I N D B L O W I N G
@@NanerBag For real. I've had the Demoncrawl soundtrack as one of my go-to chill out playlists since the game came out.
Love the music.
Edit: oh you are Italiano? Cool!
This position almost never happens if you start somewhere other than a corner.
middle start gang
I love It, thank you
The best video i´ve ever seen
I flag, therefore I am.
AND... the opening picture is wrong.
bottom row, leftmost number is a 1 but MUST be a 2 since it is clearly adjacent to 2 mines. Unless the 3 above it is incorrect.
He could have placed the flag incorrectly
@@bruschetta7711 Nope. the 3 above it had only 3 options for a mine. All other spots are revealed as numbers or empy (in case of the lower right one)
If that 3 is correct, then all the unclicked spots around it must have a mine.
But this means, that the 1 below it must be wrong, since both spots to it's left must be mines.
Not only that, but a lot of the opening picture is unsolvable without guesses, for example the two top unflagged unrevealed squares at the right cannot be proven to be an impossible bomb or a forced bomb. Same goes to literally every other unsolved square in the opening picture
I’m enjoying your videos a lot. Have you ever heard of the game Demon crawl?
awesome video
ty for this video, imma improve my mastery soon :)
I think its the easiest way for you to climb some more spots in the rankings :)
@@MineBuoy yea, currently my mastery only exp 42, my goal is get a 50 next year