What’s Your 2048 Strategy?

2048 was spiteful.

It keeps pouring 2’s and 4’s anywhere on the screen.

It crushed my fingers and spirit many times just trying to stay in the game. Only after persistent tries (and admittedly, a few coaching from my peers) did I get the logic of the game. Yesterday, I finally got this beautiful screen shot.

2048 Game

I play chess but I rarely spend more than an hour on any other mobile or PC games. Libs, my workmate and friend, introduced me to this addicting pursuit. On a fleeting moment inside the elevator, she amused me with her facial expressions (e.g. knitted eyebrows and pouting lips) and queer taps on her cellphone’s screen.

The 2048 bug explains it all.

Here’s the screenshot of Libs’ 2048 winning moment, which inspired me to seriously work on my tiles.

2048 winning moment

My FB News feeds were flooded with these 2048 game results but the best one I’ve seen so far was RC’s game board. Here’s the screen shot of his 2048 winning moment (I didn’t ask permission but I figured he’d be proud of it):

Best 2048 Game Result

 

After seeing this, I got really curious. I mean, what’s the largest tile score one could possibly get out of this seemingly easy game?

The answer is 16384.

After trying it out 100 times on a 2048 AI (artificial intelligence, yes, like a thinking computer),  the results are:

  • 2048 – 100%
  • 4096 – 97%
  • 8192 – 76%
  • 16384 – 13%

Now the obvious question is: can I beat this insanely clever AI?

In the next few sessions, I’ll test if my current techniques could take me this far:

  1. Keep the highest tile at the bottom left (or right) – whichever you prefer.
  2. Never move these tiles up or to the opposite side.

If these don’t work, I’ll redesign my game plan.

Over to you: How are you going to survive the randomness of the game? The AI calculated that about 10% of the numbers will be 4’s and 90% will be 2’s. Does that help?

 

 

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