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Re: [Bug-gnubg] GnuBG offline
From: |
Rod Roark |
Subject: |
Re: [Bug-gnubg] GnuBG offline |
Date: |
Sun, 8 Feb 2004 01:40:59 -0800 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.6 |
See 4.5 and 4.7 at:
http://mole.dnsalias.org/%7Eacepoint/GnuBG/gnubg-faq/
And then some of us have noticed that on FIBS the GnuBG-based
bots all seem to have ratings in the 1900's and 2000's....
-- Rod
On Saturday 07 February 2004 10:55 pm, Peter Stewart wrote:
> I find the claim on your website that "It currently plays at about the
> level of a championship flight tournament player" to be unsustainable,
> indeed laughable.
>
> The programme I have downloaded _cannot_ play well at all, and depends
> entirely for its outcomes on producing optimal dice for itself at
> critical points in each game.
>
> I am not an outstanding backgammon player, but enjoy the game - in other
> words, a typical prospective customer for excellent software if I could
> only find any.
>
> GnuBG is, without doubt, the least enjoyable of a pretty poor bunch of
> computer opponents I have tried.
>
> It is quite easy to beat, losing gammons and backgammons fairly often
> and only able to deal effectively with a narrow range of playing styles.
> But more to the point, there are consistent practices written in that
> ruin any pleasure in the game and in fact render the software worthless
> in its present form.
>
> For instance, when hitting a blot in its home board early in a game,
> there is an extremely high frequency of double-six dice for the
> opponent, or of locking out from re-entry by other statistically
> unlikely means.
>
> Also, it is very common for the opponent to be trapped in GnuBG's home
> board behind small arrays because repeatedly unable to get a combination
> of high & low numbers on the dice.
>
> But most absurd is that the programme doesn't bear off straight away
> when it is obviously going to lose, until what it assesses to be the
> last moment - and this can be _after_ a double throw would have cleared
> the player's board, so that GnuBG is obviously calculating the next
> throw in advance or taking a stupid risk of losing gammon for no reason
> at all..
>
> Out of interest, I tried building a particular array in my home board,
> with points 2-6 made and leaving blots on points 1 and 7, then hitting a
> GnuBG blot.No less than _four_ times out of five the next throw for
> GnuBG was 1 and 6, taking out both blots. This is utterly absurd, and a
> programme that needs to resort to such methods is unworthy of anyone's
> time & effort to play with, at any level of expertise.