Me too walter.

Summertop:

Walter Montego, Can you imagine Walter as a GLOB? Just kidding Walter.

ClayNashvilleTn: I didn't see this post that you're talking about. Could you direct me to it? And what is CrankyFranky talking about? What are you talking about? Code of honor? Right, now there's something to think about. When do I get to be a Global Moderator?

I still think that moderators that aren't global moderators that are appointed by Fencer should not be able to be removed by a global moderator, but Fencer seems happy to have it this way. I know I'd not run my site like that. Perhaps that's why his site is successful though. A little delegation of power can work if done right. I just think he's ceded too much, though as benevolent dictator he can at any time reassert his control and do what he thinks is best. Maybe that's what spurs me on in my hopes, that such a thing will happen.

...I mean I say this becuase I don't play with people from certain countries,some of them have issues and stuff!

Is it possible to put the flag on the waiting games aside the name?I bet alot o people have to click on the game to know the nationality of the player...
It would be easier to have a flag after the name of the player,if one is searching for country people.
What do you homies think about this ?

Andersp:I beleive if they have failed it's because of misunderstandings between the BIG 3.

Fencer, Globs and Mods.

It is my understanding a move is underway to rewrite or to enforce existing rules across the board. I have heard rumors of that. I hope it's true. I'm sure everyone by now saw the post that was posted by a Mod earlier this week concerning the Mods thinking, that the Code of Honor was a joke.

I do not beleive that. I do not beleive MOST mods think that. I say give them time and see if there aren't "more" changes forth coming shortly.

Yes.

Can I post?

morphy4ever: Yes.

If you don't believe me ask one of your friends. I'm sure at least one of them knows.

.. Oh yes, I forgot.. A politness rating system that is supposed to stop the worst which is abused by asking players for votes. Hence, people who would of got a life long ban from here still roam that site.

ClayNashvilleTn: There are "devils in disguise" among all kind of people...even GMs..believe me

Cranky Franky:Have you written to any of the Global Mods? They are listed below. I have been pleased with their response in general concerning any complaint I have ever had. Global moderators:

harley
bumble
NOT a floosie

Bry
BIG BAD WOLF
Eriisa
Londo

I believe that the moderator issue (and in my opinion there is an issue) has only one solution:
Put only one trustworthy moderator per board or in even more than one boards, and keep him/her for a looooong time.

Fencer ONLY (and not any global persons) as a wise man, will decide if he/she is doing his/her job well and everything will be perfect........!
My opinion.........

Jules: Is that so?

Cranky Franky: You've been a member here longer than me though until just recently I don't recall ever seeing your handle in the discussion boards that I usually read and post to. I know the feeling about this place of late. I posted quite extensively about what I thought were the moderations problems to this site on this very board back on April 8th and a day or so afterwards. I'm not familiar with you or whatever happened to you in whatever discussion board you're talking about, but I have the feeling there's some merit to what you're typing just from how I've seen things change around here since mid-February.

As for It's Your Turn, I haven't been there in some time. I didn't realize they had discussion boards, or I have forgotten that they had them. I check that site from time to time, but I haven't used my account to play a game there in more than a year. I like this site better than IYT. I'm hoping the discussion boards and how they're moderated is changed soon, but if not I can still play games on this site and just deal with the extracurriculal activities by not engaging in them. I'm not a member of any fellowships, and though I really like typing to these boards I will stop eventually if changes aren't made to how they're moderated. This will still leave me the ability to play games, which is my primary thing to do here. The secondary stuff is important to me too, but some of it has been taken from me. For the most part I have likable opponents that play their games well and are usually good sports. When I do come across someone that doesn't like playing me, we have a simple solution; we don't play any more games together.

Anyways, take care. At least hang out for a few more weeks to see if things get changed or perhaps worked on. I'm not sure if things can be made better for you, but if any of the things that I thought to do are put into place it will take some programming and trial and error to test out. I have yet to get any response from Fencer, which in a lot of ways is forcing me to guess what he's thinking and put my hopes on nothing but speculation. As you say it's his baby. I said as much in different words, but that is what it comes down to.

I think I want one of these sites for myself. I just wonder how I can get more than three poeple to visit it? :)

Cranky Franky: Yeah right, pull the other one it's got bells on it.

You forgot to mention the flaming, name calling, harrasement and other poo that goes on on the IYT boards. Not to mention that some send constant complaints into IYT so when the serious complaints get sent in they are ignored. Not that Pat Chu listens to his members much anyway... unless they threaten him.

That doesn't happen here.

Many of the people at this site do not live under self regulating forms of government. They are used to being micro-managed and prefer it that way, not because they like it but because they are used to it and they have learned how to deal with it. (I'm talking about regional politics) There really is a different way of thinking and dealing with problems here, and the people who vent their anti-US crap here are even more welcome at this site than they are at a liberal US site. Someone didn't like me throwing the anti-US crap I had to listen to back at someone else who was baiting me, so the mod had me banned. The guy who baited me is still allowed to post there and I'm still banned. I'll always be a "brain-pawn" here until I'm banned from the site or decide to leave, because there is no way I will ever voluntarily pay for being treated this way. At IYT people are respected enough to regulate themselves, and they don't have to put up with moderators who have an agenda or a personal ax to grind.

Good luck with your site Fencer. Any experimenting will have its up and downs. I suppose I could have warned you about peer moderated boards before you put those in effect, but this is your baby and I'm not the one who changes the diapers around here. IYT has a better way of letting people regulate the boards, there is less fussing with complainers and fewer personal complaints management has to deal with.

Bye y'all

harley: Could a feature like that be added without over extending the server Fencer is currently using?

Actually, I'm fascinated by the use neural nets that playBunny was talking about. Are neural nets something current PCs can use, or are already using? I'm hopelessly behind in knowing what's up with PC capability, in case you hadn't already guessed that. Neural nets are the logical way to go in creating an artificial intelligence, although the home grown all natural organic ones are still the best and most reliable neural nets on the planet...I need some sleep.

farmer sam: I've got me Acme personality wipe/install kit.

Jules: Too depressing.

Harley, I hope you were being sarcastic.

I choose Kryton!

I'll use Marvin lol

I thought a discussion about programmes was quite appropriate for a games site. If people are using them, it will affect the future of BK, or they may even become a feature! Programme assisted tournaments! That could be interesting!

myfanwy: //RRRRRRRR that doesnot compute/ RRRRR/ please rephrase input.port/slash/?

Can't this conversation go to the computer board or something?

Caissus: I don't know how it was done, but someone (I've already named him, so it's too late to keep him anonymous) took one of my completed game and analysed the opponents side of it. It came back with a high 90 percentile probability (something over 95%) of being entirely played by a computer. We both suspected he was using a computer, but he also had quite an extensive knowledge of the game, so it is possible we could have both been wrong. The individual in question also had an extensive knowledge of everything there is to know in the known unverse, but whenever I questioned him regarding matters I am familiar with he would simply repeat what he was harvesting off google. I caught him posting entire passages from sites by entering suspicious looking text he posted as his own thoughts into google. No reason for me to think he wasn't cheating in chess games as well, he played perfect book openings and the games were flawlessly thematic(?). I'm definitely a flawed player, and I'm still not sure what the word thematic is supposed to mean, even though it's been expained to me a few times.

But you're right about occassional use of a program. There's really no way to see the difference between a computer move and a sudden flash of brilliant insight. Besides, those sudden flashes can be painful if you have sensitive eyeballs.

playBunny: Any questions Yes could you please repeat that?

Dang, thanks for an informative post..I'm still reading.

playBunny: and even some games (I guess what you might call standard games) at World Class level. This is something that any of the top 50(?) players here is capable of.

Reduce approximatelly 45 from 50 and you are OK....
I guess that the first 50 are on the Intermediate to Advanced in the GNUBG grades.....That's mainly because almost all here play too defensively by not leaving any blots.
(A small example: I've seen millions of times to play the starting 41 as a 5, you know where. Awful!) This is not a terrible strategy, its quite successful(although compared to the best strategy is far behind), but that combined with other weaknesses, it's way below the GNUBG's Expert level............

Also do not always trust the Snowie's or GNUBG's or Jellyfish's or BGBlitz's (you forgot that and it's really strong!) estimates of your play.
For example the usual thing with me is that GNUBG finds around 3 small (Second choices or ?! if you are familiar with GNUBG's analysis) mistakes on a game, but after a rollout, the 2 of them are actually the best moves.........So you should always do a rollout in the identified mistakes......

Also Jellyfish 3.5 as a player !!in its full strenth!! but without any analysing features, is free and very small to download and play with a very good player......

Right now i would rank as following:
1) GNUBG 0.14.3 with very little difference from
2) Top Human Players + Snowie 4.1
3) BGBlitz 1.9.0
4) Jellyfish 3.5

Cranky Franky:"By the way, there are programs that can analise a chess game and compute the probability of a chess program being used. AD used something like this to analise a game I played at IYT, so I know these sort of programs exist."

And what will you do if a player in game plays the most moves by himself and only sometimes is using a program?
To find out if a move was considered by the player or described by a chessprogram is not possible with safeness.
I know that the chessbaseserver is using some statistical methods.But these methods work only in fast games without breaks and doesn`t work in turn based games.

playBunny: Thank you for this detailed explanation of Backgammon playing machines. I'm not going to bother with all that to get better at playing. I'll keep doing what I've been doing, winging it and seeing what works. Then trying to remember it if a similar situation comes up in a different game. I saw a game between sko and Rex a few months back. After watching how it was played with going amazement, I decided to change my style too. It has worked as I stopped my downward slide in the ratings and have cracked the top ten a couple times in the last few weeks. Plus the games are much more fun for me with my new plans and style, though it has led to me getting spanked very bad on occasion from leaving them blots about the board as I sometime do. Recognizing when not to do that is now what I have to work on. :)

Last year when my truck was broke down in Bishop, I bought two old Backgammon books at a used book store. The authors of both of them are the Jacoby and Crawford that are mentioned from time to time. Plus a Barclay guy and one other gentleman whose name escapes me right now. I'd be willing to bet these guys would play well against the programs you write of. I can also imagine that because of how computers find out things, some of those cherished older plans would hurt these old experts in play agains these programs. I've never used the doubling cube, so when it becomes available, I'll have to start up another learning slope. From some of the examples in one of my books, this doubling cube and how to figure out the odds (Especially at the end of a game when both players just have a few more men to bear off) would really be something that a computer program would excel at. At least on a turn based site when someone doubles me, I'll have the time to count on my fingers (and toes if necessary) and figure out the odds once I understand how the cube affects decisions. These guys that wrote my books were obviously into playing it for high stakes and that definitely is different than playing it for free or a buck a game.

Uh oh..smoke coming out of my..

My earhairs are on fire!!

playBunny: My neural net is overheating.

I'm going to explain a bit about backgammon programs for those who know nothing or have only recently come across them.

The best backgammon programs these days play at World Class level - in other words they will beat the highest level of player as much as they will lose against them - equal skill + equal luck = equal wins and losses (over time).

They work by playing a huge number of games against themselves and amassing statistical data. The mechanism inside is called a neural net because it resembles (in an incredibly simplified way) a network of neurons. I say incredibly simplified because while our brains have billions of neurons and up to tens of thousands of connections from each, current neural nets in use today number in the hundreds or low thousands and are interconnected much more simply. Nevertheless, these nets do gain real expertise.

The best backgammon programs can select all the possible moves for a given position and dice roll and state (very accurately) what order the moves should be ranked in and (less accurately) what the winning/gammon/backgammon chances are. Ditto for cube decisions. The programs have no intellectual understanding of why a move is the best, it's simply the result from the neural net's statistical weightings. This is akin to intuition in humans - many experts know what they are doing but would find it a real challenge to explain with precision the input and copnsiderations that have made up their decisions. People, of course, have self reflection and can examine their intuitions and generate reasons for them - rationalising - but this process is usually after the fact and, while sounding plausible, is prone to error.

There are two well known backgammon programs - Snowy and Jellyfish - that play at World class level. These are commercial programs and cost $$$. They are much in use by the top level players and have radically changed the game at that level by overturning beliefs previously held dear. There is also a free program, GnuBg, that has already been mentioned on this board. It is on a par with the others strengthwise but has a lower ease of use. But, hey, it's free!

You can play against these programs and they will tell you when you are making a bad move, or they can give the list of moves for a given dice roll with the winning chances calculated for each. Choosing the top move gives the best chance of success at that point.

I use GnuBg. I was taught backgammon in my teens by an Arab who lived next door but had no-one to play with; I got reasonably good as far as I remember. When he moved, I then had nobody myself and left the game alone for many years. I picked it up again about a year ago and played against the robot players at VogClub. Then I discovered GnuBg and started analysing my games and using the program to help me make my moves.

To say that it helped me is an understatement. Initially the program judged my games to be "Awful!" and "Beginner", occasionally "Intermediate". In the last year I have come to play many games at "Advanced" and "Expert" level, and even some games (I guess what you might call standard games) at World Class level. This is something that any of the top 50(?) players here is capable of. I still have much to learn and certain game types will find me making blunders that get me classed as Beginner again. I thoroughly recommend using GnuBg if you are serious about learning the game, if it suits your style of learning, and, probably most importantly, have the time for it. I'm unemployed and have had the luxury of being able to spend 100's of hours examining moves and games and asking what the backgammon programs cannot answer - "Why is this move the best?" In other words my prowess results from the use of a good tool coupled with sheer hard work.

--------
Cheating

The opportunity to cheat is immediately obvious - you only need enter the current position and dice roll and ask for the moves. A successful cheat would not play an entire game according to what the machine said but would only use it to advise in tricky situations. In other situations it would be possible to pick the 2nd or 3rd moves, even 7th, etc, if they were not desperately worse than the best. This makes it somewhat difficult to detect a cheat.

In practice, however, if you examine the games of the top players at most sites, you will find that even the best will make bad moves and even huge blunders - as judged by the program. These programs are very exacting judges. The player will sometimes be able to argue why their move is good but more often it will be recognised that the move was indeed a poor one. This makes it somewhat easier, then, to detect a clumsy cheat. [That's in general, though. For Fencer to detect backgammon programs would be impossible as he would have to analyse everything. It takes several minutes per game and that's computer power which is not available - nor, if it were, would it be very productive use of his servers.]

Using a computer when playing against a robot is hardly cheating but when playing against other people it certainly is - unless there is disclosure and acceptance beforehand.

What about using the computer to analyse a move after it has been made? A main reason to do this is to maximise learning while that move is pertinent in the mind. The aim is to improve your play in future games by recognising the type of position and/or knowing how to act given a particular dice roll - building one's intuition or heuristics. But is it cheating, even if not as obvious as examining a move beforehand?

Well, it will have no effect on the game in some situations but in others it will. If you are attempting to trap a piece behind a prime and have been concentrating on adding a block at the front, but the bg analyser marks your move down because it reckons that you should have been trying to close the rear end first, then your next moves will be influenced as you change your plan. The computer's analysis has suggested a tactic in an ongoing situation - and therefore been of benefit even though used in retrospect.

On the other hand there are very many situations, especially at the start of the game where the volatility of the position means that tactics must be kept very fluid and every position examined as if the game were starting from there. In those situations the use of the computer would not be of much benefit in the current game.


Any questions?

Pedro Martínez: I see now, I did notice he put in for all these regular vac. days.
I see him on Brain King every day so I never thought he would use the days while he's playing.

SunFire: You should have looked at his profile more closely. He has Thu and Fri as weekend days and other days as regular vacation days. That's why the number of his remaining vac days have stayed at 9 days for some time now...I just recommend to be patient, in two weeks at the latest, he'll have to start moving...

Is the time limit thing turned off, I been trying to play against a player who joined a tournement with 7 days per move and it started about three weeks ago, the player still has not even moved once in about 11 games......
I been looking the last three days and his vac. days have stayed at 9 days after three days in a row and the games have timed out every day now.
Also his weekend days are Thursday's and Friday's and it's only Tuesday?
Why join if you are not going to play

Good grief! I think it's bad enough some of the discussion boards are micro-managed to the point it doesn't pay to say anything other Hello, hi there, how are you today. Oh, I'm fine, thanks for asking. Did I offend you? I'm sorry.

But there's no feasible way for Fencer to micro-manage how games between individuals are played. Think about it, some one could be claiming to use a program even if he isn't using one. Reverse psychology, fake em out by suggesting they are a using a resource they really aren't using. It could be the player using one and admitting it doesn't know they are doing anything wrong, or doesn't know he should have said so from the start. That's possible too. A cheater who knows he's cheating won't tell on himself, so I doubt anyone claiming to use a computer thinks of it as cheating.

By the way, there are programs that can analise a chess game and compute the probability of a chess program being used. AD used something like this to analise a game I played at IYT, so I know these sort of programs exist.

Andersp, luckily, I haven't come across a person using a computer (to my knowlege).

Fencer: No. Good players can't predict dice rolls either. It's irrelevant. I admit proof is not easy, although analysing a large number of games and comparing moves to those of a gammon program is possible. I'm not suggesting you're going to do this. Not being able to enforce the rule is no excuse for condoning it's infringement though. If someone admitted using a program, at the least he can be told it is not acceptable.

Summertop: Maybe im just too oldfashioned but i happen to like fair play...to delay moves as a "revenge" wouldnt make the playing more fun, would it?

Andersp, were you enjoying the game BEFORE you found out your opponent was using a computer? It is very unlikely that a computer/program is actually making the moves on BK. The player is just using it to tell them what they should do. Therefore, you technically are playing against a person...they are just cheating.

We all know tactics on BK to annoy your opponent. Such as taking the full amount of time per move. Rather than resign, why not do this? Or use your own program (just don't tell Fencer)?

Mike UK: What I want to say it that no computer can predict BrainKing's dice rolls. That's all.
Btw, if someone claims he doesn't use any computer programs, how do you want to prove it is true?

Fencer: I'm rather disturbed by your response. The user agreement clearly states that using computers to make moves is cheating. Are you saying you don't mean this?

There are at least 3 well-known backgammon playing programs and they all play to a very high standard - world class in fact. So playing against a computer is like playing against a world champion player.

There are worse things going on here than losing to a machine. I gave up playing chess for awhile, because sometime during the middle game of one match I was able to turn a lost game into a winning one. After that my opponent took advantage of our 7 days per move, and would only move after the seven days were nearly up. I aways use the 7 days/per as insurance, to make sure nothing happends to cause either one of us to time out. The game started last August, I think, but wasn't over until about January or Febuary. It's annoying tactics like this that can ruin the fun for me.

I know that I've played programs with players who don't tell me it's a program, you can almost always tell when that happens because a machine "thinks" differently, and it never makes the sort of errors people will make. People can have good days or bad days, and play can be affected by how they are feeling and for other reasons, but computers always play with a machine-like consistency.

Walter Montego: Why i should resign..because i play for fun and to play a machine is NO FUN I can lose those BKR points, they wont mean a thing anyway when/if we know we might play machines.

Andersp: Why resign? Why not play the game to its conclusion and then not play that person again if you feel they have hurt you in some way? You might as well use the game as a learninng experience, even if you were tricked into playing a machine with false pretenses. Remember, it's not the machines that are cheating, but the people that employ them without telling you in advance. One thing about a machine, it won't get impatient. You don't need to resign, no matter how far behind you are in the game. I've used this to help me understand how the various pieces move in Janus Chess. If I was playing a person in some of those games, I would've resigned out of respect to them when I losing with no chance of winning. A machine doesn't care about that kind of stuff. It just makes the moves that it calculates are best. It has no emotions or ego for you to worry about. Plus, the person that's using the machine will get impatient with you for not resigning a lost position. That'll serve them right for using a machine against you and not informing you in advance.

Walter Montego: The only losers are those who are using a "machine", as long as i dont know that i play against a machine its fine but as soon as i know i will resign immediately. Im sure that BrainKing will lose a lot of "good reputation" if Fencer will allow "cheating machines"

Walter Montego: I played SMURF as well. it was a good game,and SMURF beat me no worse than you have,Walter

Summertop: Yes, those are reasons for someone to have. In the case of Example 2, which is the less likely of these two reasons, there is such a person on this site. Sumerian. He is very up front about his program that he wrote that plays Janus Chess and other Chess variants. He told me in advance and it is in his profile. His machine has gotten betten over the months that I've been playing it. He says it plays better than him, so when he tries to improve its play he has to test out its play against stronger players. I'm not a strong enough player to beat it any more, but I still play the S.M.I.R.F. I've won 5 and lost 20 against it. It has a long win streak going on me now. I've improved my play of Janus Chess from playing against it, but the machine keeps beating me. The last time in 8 moves without a capture. Yes, I made a careless move, but you can't do that when you play machines. To beat them at Chess type games you have to have a long range plan or a thematic plan based on positioning. These machines are really good at leaving things that look unguarded, but aren't. You take the bait and you'll almost always be in a world of hurt shortly.

I didn't come on this site to play machines. I make an exception for Sumerian's Smirf. I've learned about programs and Janus Chess, plus he's a nice guy and honest about the program. If I only cared about winning every game and how high my rating was, I'd go about my business of playing different to acheive those goals. I like winning, but as one gets better at a game and wants to play with the best and have a chance of beating the best, there is a cost to it. Lots of study, work, and thinking. Some will make the sacrifice and deserve their championships and renown. Others will take shortcuts or cheat and think they're one of the big boys. They will say, "Look, I've won all these tournaments or I have the highest rating. I am the best." They're just fooling themselves, but that's human nature.

Because it's almost impossible to verify if you're playing a machine or not when playing the game on this site, most people look at these kinds of records with a grain of salt. Real championships are held in ways that eliminate or make it very hard to cheat. Even the ones that allow or require programs would not use this format for a serious championship. Though there just might be a correspondence or internet championship out there. If so, then that's the place for these machine to play, not here against someone that they haven't even informed them of. This machine problem is one reason I don't play Chess on this site. As far as I know no one here uses a machine to play Dark Chess. I had thought of Backgammon as being another such game, but I've learned differently from reading the discussion board and giving it some thought. Since there's luck in it, a person can still beat a machine at Backgammon. As I'm in the top 20 of ratings currently, I must be playing a decent game of Backgammon or am lucky or both. I don't know if any of my opponents have used a machine to play their moves or advise them. I'm not going to worry about it. If they tell me I'm playing a machine, I'll have the choice of playing or not. If they keep it a secret, I still get to play the game.

Has anyone noticed the times for frineds lists nd boards etc etc are out of sinc??