The Battleship Algorithm 

In 1979 it was disco, here we are 40 years later in 2019 with RU-vid.

@@rhettorical Yvan eht nioj.....

The big Nut SponsorSHIPS!

smells fishy

You're not even wrong

Everyone in response: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JW68goC4_es.html

Can we stop with this meme already?

@@jackroymeyer6336 I am tired of memes. Trying to find an original, insightful comment on the internet is impossible.

Actually it was the navy who said "Yeah you can do that"

@@RMosher11 meme is a template what is important is the context, if you really want to find an original, insightful comment google them. The quotes are great

It's gold! Give this man a medal!

I was half expecting them to sound the general quarters alarm and for the sailor to just give him a 'Dude!' look.

i think that’s the speaker on/off button lol

Better yet, at that moment the general quarters alarm should have gone off, and the petty officer should have looked at him like 'Dude!'.

"Oh, so *that's* what that button does"

No but actually Yes o.o

Outwit, outlast, outplay

Hopefully with less drinking of pee...

"Adopt, adapt, and improve." (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MG9Ql1Wyxbg.html)

@@johnsmall5901 I thought that was "All for one and one for all"?

♫ *Where can you find pleasure? Search the world for treasure? Learn science? Technology?* ♫

William Osman got sponsored by them as well

@@Kevroa1 egg drop haha

Well Honest Trailer was also sponsored by US Army.

Jelles marble runs is sponsored by formula e (real)

They also sponsored willam osman

@@janhetjoch beat me to it

Excuse me, you missed Brilliant and Skillshare

Also, Curiosity Stream, Nord VPN and LastPass

Hov er people going to buy domains, though?

Jerry Rupprecht 5% off with code WW3

@@gatoMan102 h

Don't joke about that after the fall of the USSR drug cartels tried to buy submarines and were asked, is that with or without missiles?

SALVATION

@@green5260 *HE WALKED ALL OVER IT WITH HIS DIRTY BOOTS! OVER THE CRISP WHITE SHEETS OF MY BED THAT I HAD JUST MADE!*

Nice pfp

alternatively, a lot of intermediate players will strictly avoid shooting at any squares where they placed their own ships. Definitely something to keep in mind.

I just draw a pen*s with my shots, then branch off if I hit something. With this expert strategy I achieve a 50% win rate. But I also achieve a 20% rate of forfeits from players who think I'm not taking it seriously and just walk away from the table. In summary, I win about 70% of matches, so while I'm not a pro, I'm still, statistically speaking, significantly better than most players. By drawing pen*ses.

@@B3RyL hahaha great strategy! 👍

Sure, that works, but my first thoughts were Minesweeper in a minefield and Minecraft in a coal mine.

@@maighstir3003 Much better!

What about PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on a private island, or Mario Kart on a race track?

Minecraft? Ah yeah... Minecraft! That famous game where you craft mines and hide them to kill everybody else...

What about Call of Duty in Kabul? A little late for that one I guess...

Now I'm curious. Is there a battleship paradox?

@@nekkoPi can't find one 😂

Didn’t*

@@nekkoPi There may not an one yet. But we know Kevin has talked about a lot of math paradoxes.

If a battleship doesnt battle, is it still a battleship? *play vsauce music*

_more_ underwater

Jonathan Stiles doesn’t a submarine change it’s buoyancy

@Jonathan Stiles Still either whether a surface vessel or submarine it's a controlled balance between weight and buoyancy, key word there being controlled bad things like sinking or capsizing happen when one fails to control either properly.

WW2 submarines spent most of their time on the surface. Being diesel/electric and all.

You raised my submarine...

5:51

@Brownskikuca Garlic Bread what did he say?

@Brownskikuca Garlic Bread everyone felt that

@@shitposter3k what did he say

C4 is a bomb lol

It's a flawless strategy, until it makes you not have friends anymore.

@@imveryangryitsnotbutter A minor consequence to pay for.

One of my friends has a super shiny forehead which gives me an edge whenever I play games against her.

Are you Satan

espionage is one of techniques employed in war

Yeah, he basically just said, “Computers are perfect at it, but we can imagine it in our minds.” I guess that helps? ??? ??????

THIS! The only thing he told us about the optimal strategy is, "Start in the middle and work from there." Sooooo infuriating. Are we supposed to aim for the biggest gaps? I've been nigh-unstoppable since switching to the parity strategy 15 years ago.

@@JordanMetroidManiac Basically, if there's a lot of misses in an area, a big ship won't fit in the spaces between them, so don't expect it to be there if you haven't sunk a big ship yet.

If you want to learn how the optimal strategy actually works, here's a python implementation of the code: github.com/DataSnaek/battleships_ai

Pleasantly surprised to know I've been playing close to optimal for most of my life without even knowing it. Only took a few games to start hunting on only one colour, so to speak, then not much longer to factor in the size of remaining boats when making more guesses.

Maybe that's why he was allowed to get so close to it, lol

@@claraferrell7811 He also probably asked what button was safe to touch so they could do the bit.

*submarine launches missile at China*

Somewhere on Earth: Hit and sunk, Submarine.

the pasadena ADCAP'd everything. :)

yea

I just lost the game

@@epicsmashman6806 Damnit I just lost the game

it was a staged game.. u really think that guy landed 2/3 of his shots legit?

Maybe The US Navy is planning something.

@@kaysas9686 *cough* recruiting strategies

Take a look at Smarter Everyday. There’s a video where the military tells Destin the internet it’s a combat field. This is part of their soft power strategy. Win hearts and minds online. Every major RU-vidd these days seems to have been invited to a military/ nasa facility

They need smart guys, but most smart people don't sign up for the military so they're sponsoring these youtubers in an attempt to recruit more smart guys.

The military wants science/engineering minded people. Sponsoring science channels makes sense.

That actually could be a cool but difficult game. You're allowed to move ships. Hits still stay on the ship. Now, that would be hard. Now picture finding a moving ship in the pacific..

@@TheRagingPlatypus this sounds fun as hell

I remember everyone would bunch their ships together, because we played by the rule that you had to announce that a ship was sunk, but not WHICH ship was sunk. So you might think you just sunk someone's carrier but it was actually a destroyer sitting next to a battleship! Or put all five ships abreast and let the opponent puzzle over how they got five hits in a row but didn't sink anything...

This is a severely underappreciated comment. At the bottom of the datagenetics blog, there's a demonstration of the so-called optimal algorithm that uses a probability map showing the most likely locations ships could be in. The problem is, it shows a probability field on the very first move, and that probability field is not uniform. This strategy indeed looks impressive, but with these properties there's no possible way it could be optimal because I can exploit it. To be fair, I may have missed it, but I didn't see Nick Berry himself claim this strategy as optimal on the blog. Kevin and Davis in the video, however, are a different story; Davis suggests always trying the middle square first with some rationale (5:03). Kevin uses the word "optimal" at 4:20 (in a suggestive criticism about other algorithms), but more explicitly in the vid description ("cracking the code for optimal Battleship play"). So I've no beef with Nick, but Kevin and Davis are overstating this. Absolutely though, if you assume I'm placing my ships using a placement strategy whereby I randomly select from all possible ship positions where I want to place my ships using a uniform distribution... and you use that to generate a non-uniform targeting strategy, then in effect all you accomplished was to develop a non-uniform targeting strategy that made an assumption I need not fit into about how I place my ships. And if your targeting strategy is such that you're going to target some areas more than others, that gives me a strategic advantage in placing my ships in areas you're less likely to target first. And if I have a strategic advantage, you ipso facto don't have an optimal strategy. I think in proper terms, one should consider the ship placements to in effect be the first turn, and this should be factored into play for a real optimal strategy. Furthermore it's not just that first turn where advantages would come in... if you're always assuming out of all possible remaining positions each is equally likely, then you're carving out yet more "cold spots" I could be more favorable to in my placements. More complex strategies could very well pop out such as "sacrificing" certain ships along the probability-field-assuming-uniformity strategies to keep the other ships further ahead. Ultimately, one cannot make any assumptions at all about how one's opponent plays if one is to make a claim that their strategy is optimal; a true optimal gameplay would be one that in the long run you cannot ever hope to exploit, but rather at best tie. This is certainly a game theory problem.

@@yy2bggggs dont care

@@jimothyjimothy1 I admire your perseverance; surely it must be exhausting to reply to every second tier comment you find yourself not caring about.

It also makes me curious what a modern AI would do when playing battleship..

@@jimothyjimothy1 you just got burned boi

This nub came on the Pasadena to give US a checkout on battleship? The audacity.

out there making the world a less safe place. you must be proud

​@@magica3526I'm proud to set condition 1SQ for Strategic Launch upon receipt of a valid and authentic EAM civilian.

Or just use intuition/cheat

This man made a his own essay of his own for battleship to go with the main video

OH NO!!! I just saw something very VERY hideous! I looked in the mirror! OH NO!! But I am the best RU-vidr of this generation so it is all good! OH YESSS!!! Thanks for your attention dear eurovison vidyn

@@AxxLAfriku subbed

@@syrialak101 so you sub to him but not me...lol I guess?

Pew

Needs more motorboating.

JoseBetacourt5 If you got the guns, you do what you want

they did one with William Osman

They have something to sell, so why not? A pretty good ad, tbh.

It's just a recruitment scheme. To make the navy seem more "fun"

@@ojdidit69 I get the purpose, I just didn't know they could lol (Also I'm in the Marines, so this is kinda weird to me)

It's military outreach, gotta get done.

Better than the other waste of time trainings they made us sit through on crew’s mess when we could’ve been doing maintenance, studying, or checking off our hit list

Basically

Aaaay another Smarter commenter in the wild 👋

@@ginraw 🙋

Enhance

Enhance

Sharpen

*E N H A N C E*

INCREASE RESOLUTION.

I still haven't become a Real Estate novelist...

@@MrPAULONEAL but did you find time for a wife?

@@rampagent9226 Ironically no...

he couldn't see his hand

That does not matter, he showed him the general direction of his ships. Like he saw how "high/low" and how "deep" it went from the left side of the board.

not like they didnt know the locations already.

It doesn't matter. They weren't playing a real game. The whole thing was scripted and every move planned out to the dialogue. Did you honestly think the B4 joke and them ending with the battleship sinking was a coincidence?

And right after that he went straight for the carrier lol

what i know has the 1 through 4 size part, but not the no touch part.

That's the version I play. I find it way more interesting in how you place your ships. After many games with the same opponent it has a lot of mind games because using the most optimal placement will be too obvious and thus you'll have to gamble which makes every much pretty fresh.

I played just the same version back in the schooldays in Ukraine. Also the ships couldn't touch each other. Looking for 1-tile ships was the most hardcore part.

I remember playing that version. Just like you said, pieces couldn't touch and there was 1x1 pieces. I still have a kit in my bedroom... ( ╹▽╹ )

This is what the *puzzle* version of Battleship does. A key element of strategy in that version of the game (and a key deduction in solving the puzzle type) is that when you have a hit, you automatically know every space _sharing a corner_ with it is empty. Unless you play a variation allowing for diagonally-placed ships, anyhow XD

that has always been my strategy.

Also, every 3 holes cause screw it we're for the win. 66% odds I don't miss the little one? I'll take those odds

@@joshuabigbee5874 Nah, every 4 holes seems better, because you can still use 2-space parity if the 2-space ship remains. 3-space requires more shots if you missed the little one.

@@RoderickEtheria every 4 holes = 3 space. Every 3 = 2 spaces. I get you run the risk of missing the 2 long ship but that was my point. Expediency and going for the win > slow thoroughness sometimes.

@@joshuabigbee5874 Both risk missing the 2 long ship, however the 4 hole situation can be followed up with parity afterward, the 3 hole situation already put things outside parity, and so will be landing two shots in the same spot it would have aimed if you were aiming for parity. The 4 hole situation is also faster and more expedient than the 3 hole situation, because while you are more likely to miss the 3-size ships with the 4-hole, it's not a huge likelyhood, and you're able to be more thorough after your expediency the first scan.

Brr..

Reminds me of that one Simpsons episode

@@komentierer you mean YVAN EHT NIOJ

@@dominikd1397 What language is that? Excuse me, I have a contract to sign.

Subs are now co-ed baby. Aw yeah...

Vasilis Vaggelis It still could be used as a strat even when saying which ship sunk...

I understand what you mean. another is hiding your 2 on an edge and butting it to another perpendicular ship. people only notice very late unless they hit the parallel ship first of course

Such rules are actually used in Russian version of battleships. Beside that, there's also no 5-cell ship, but instead of it each player has four 1-cell motorboats

@@antonkomaristyy3562 I'm Russian and I learned a variation where ships aren't allowed to touch.

Vasilis, your great intelligence has driven you insane.

C4 is an explosive move

Yea and one that stayed relevant...

Oh my atheist god your "this man" pfp is so scary

He does exist, his name's AntVenom

I imagine them talking about how squarely square are minecraft blocks

@@newfieocean ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i1qIT-INew4.html

Easier for the government to spy on us👍😎🤙

Did you misspell on purpose?

Yeah, that's one of the most commonly called shots. There's a few popular letter/number combos that shouldn't ever be played on simply due to how common it is for our brain to "like" them. Part of why we aren't good at true randomness...

@@seancasey6472 Nice.

I usually do a1 then a6 followed by b2 and b6... and so on until I find a ship, it guarantees that the biggest ship is found, then once I have that ship, can start guessing a3 and a8, and follow the same pattern to find the 3 and 4 sized ships. I do randomize it a little bit in that the patter I use I don't necessarily start in the a row, but the over arching pattern has given me 70ish% win rate

Very!

In German it's "Schiffe-versenken" which means Ship sinking

In Turkish it's "Amiral Battı" which means "Admiral Has Sunk"

In English, it’s just “Battleship,” which means “Battleship”

In Dutch (Belgium and Netherland) we say "Zeeslag" which means "naval battle". "geraakt" (hit) and "gezonken" (sunken) are also used during the game.

In The Legend of Zelda, it's "Sploosh Kaboom".

Well, the navy is looking for technical people for their underwater tech. museums. but "call of duty" only finds ground troupes for the army. So...

Playing with the biggest, best, and loudest toys in the world? You'll always find boys willing to do that.

I mean, you're not wrong, it's just "the attack" but in French lol

@@ryapowa well it kinda is wrong, since attaque is a feminine word, so you wouldn't use "le", but also since attaque starts with a vowel, you need the " l' " to contract it.

@@theicyphoenix1063 I didn't mean that their grammar was correct

Negative. Submarines submerge, ships sink.

They can sink farther

I'm not playing this game anymore, Dad.

@@WahlVids subs sink when they are breached

@@joshuahales7551 Etymology time! What's "Submarine"? If what you're saying is always 100% true, then don't we call them a "Sinkmarine"?

But what if they were expecting you to do that? Making the middle the safest place?

Ethan The Gamer COUNTRY ROOOOAAAADS!

the famous sonar hiding strategy "drunk American party ship"

@@Brent-jj6qi TO THE PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! I BELOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG

@@sarowie Down Periscope?

I did the same thing but got 17 years in prison with a $500,000 fine Crazy world we live in am I right

Dustin from Smarter Everyday did a video about sonar from a nuclear submarine. He must've read your comment.

@@ThePrufessa hahaha I was just about to respond w that

Top secret clearance is needed for some of it

The paradox that you always lose

There is no paradox. It's an algorithm.

In which way?

Yes

@@Cheshiremd To join the navy

Pretty much.

🎶 Yvan eht nioj 🎶

Until they attack your country

@@SomeIdiotWithaWrench yep, honestly the hardest part about it is all the usual red tape around having civilians on board. For the crew, especially for stuff like this, the worst part about it is probably just the field day beforehand. After that, it's just another day to plan your work around.

It's good press.

Well in this case the Navy paid him to be there, this is a sponsored video.

Well it isn't like they showed us very much...we now know what their mess hall looks like and 1 other room, I doubt there is anything visible in either case that would be a national security risk.

They have to send it to OpSec(Operational Security) who vet the video and censor any sensitive information. They go through that stuff frame by frame so we wouldn't learn anything that isn't publicly known through the video.

Craig Smallegan !!!!!

@@JohnDavis-qw2qr I'd ask what you've been up to, but I kinda think I know the answer to that already

yeah no idea why top secret military tech is censored from the eyes of anyone out there including potential enemies of the us.

@@guy3nder529 actually the reactor is just secret information, not top secret. Fun fact. Source: Former submariner with Secret government clearance.

@@freedomlover2808 still unavailable for the public.

Certainly there is no single optimal placement, at least due to symmetries, but I actually believe that there is no such thing as an optimal placement. If there was an optimal placement, then your opponent could potentially know about it and start guessing the locations of your ships immediately, which would make it the complete opposite of optimal placement. It’s a contradiction.

Jordan Fischer yes I get what you mean. But I can think of better placements than some, for example placing all of your ships in corners would be bad placement. Avoiding edges and corners, and placing them apart from each other might be better.

Lars Candland It’s like passwords. There is no “best” password because adversaries can guess it immediately, but the _kind_ of password is what makes one password better than others. So what kind of ship placement is best in Battleship? Probably the sparse placement and away from corners since there are the most ways that can be done, minimizing the probability of a hit regardless of your opponent’s knowledge about the game. Again, in the situation of setting good passwords, you would use a relatively long password and increase the number of characters you use in it because that maximizes the number of possible passwords and thus minimizes the probability of an adversary guessing it correctly.

Jordan Fischer makes sense. Just want to win next time I play battle ship

Why are the the nubs playing battleship when they should be QUALIFYING!

Well if there is only 1 microwave and a lot of navy people all want to reheat their pizza all at once...gotta have that strong microwave...