I have another question regarding GnuBG.

I want to play Hypergammon with GnuBG - so I ran makehyper to generate the database files. But now I have no clue where to put them. I tried putting them in my home directory, into the build directory of GnuBG, and into /usr/share/gnubg and /var/lib/gnubg - I could never selebt Hypergammon as the game type, only Backgammon and Nackgammon. The GnuBG documentation only tells me to generate the files, not where to put them. So has anybody of you done this before and has an idea that might get me on the right track?

Thanks :)

When I said I downloaded and installed the latest version, I was wrong. I got a little confused by the naming conventions for their tarballs and apparently I downloaded an older one from 2008. I now installed the snapshot from today, and it still works as intended.

Position ID: AwAAEAEAAAAAAA
Match ID: MAGgAkAAKAAA

playBunny: I was using the latest version from the Ubuntu repositories, so until your post I just assumed it was fairly recent. I just downloaded the latest snapshot and installed from source, and voilà! it changed and tells me that "Double, take" is indeed the correct action.

So it seems like some glitch that was introduced and fixed between your versions, or maybe some obscure error resulting from the package building process. It could always be a bug in one of the libraries used, etc.

Anyway, thank you all for your assistance, and for restoring my faith in GnuBG, and my certainty that it is smarter than I am ;)

I don't have the mat file on this computer atm, and do not remember what match it was, but the position ID was AwAAEAEAAAAAAA

Ah, okay! Thank you

It was set to g11, whatever that means. Mec25 yielded the same result, as did the different Jacobs METs. And again, it even told me that spot was a "No double, take" in money play, and METs shouldn't be taken into account there, right?

(A lot of this is new to me, I haven't gone past the "looking for huge mistakes I made" and the "let's see whether I really was as unlucky as it felt" stages of analysis yet)

The version is Version GNU Backgammon 0.90.0 Dec 9 2010

What is the MET and how do I find out about it?

wetware: I am on my phone atm, so I cannot easily look it up. But I am fairly certain that I was 17-away and my opponent 16-away. And as mentioned, GnuBG told me the same when I set this up as a money game. So to me it seems as if the expert level simply has some big flaws when it comes to end game situations.

You counted 65 twice ;)

I don't think it's a user error. I don't know how I would make an error there. Also, the only thing I changed for it to come to the same conclusion as myself was setting the analysis level to grandmaster instead of expert.

Is the expert level of GnuBG even useful? Or is just that it sucks at simple end game problems?

I and my opponent both had two checkers left - I had one on the 5 and one on the 2 point, my opponent's both were on the 1 point. It's my turn, center cube. So it's hit or miss. I calculate I am a 19:17 favorite and doubled. After the game, GnuBG told me that was a mistake, despite agreeing that I was a favorite in that spot. But it somehow came to the conclusion that after me doubling and my opponent taking it, my opponent would become the favorite. I was confused, as that didn't make any sense to me. It was early in a 21 points match, and the score was close, so I didn't think that would have any impact - but I let GnuBG analyze it as a money game regardless. It told me No double, beaver would be the right move. Didn't make sense to me, and I don't see how beavering would change that simple of a problem, where beavering HAD to be bad imo. Still, deactivated beavers, GnuBG tells me it's no double, take, despite me being a favorite. I recalculated, and messaged two people about it, because it didn't make any sense to me. Finally I had the expert idea to change GnuBGs analysis level from the default expert to grandmaster. And there it was, the Double, take, that I had envisioned.

So why would expert level fail to get such a super simple problem right? I mean I have no doubt GnuBG is worlds better than I am even at the expert setting. But at what point does it become unreliable? Does it have a general weakness regarding endgame patterns?

LOL

Pedro Martínez: lol, awesome :D

saeco:

wetware: Oops, you just reminded me that I wanted to include Nackgammon files ages ago

I'm glad you like it!

alanback: In this game I shouldn't even have lost a gammon... ;) Well if you always lose 5 points on a timeout I think that should be stated on the Triple Gammon rules page, shouldn't it?

saeco: but do you actualy lose a backgammon for a timeout even if it wasn't possible to lose one if the game was played till the end?

Not on all occasions. If you alredy moved a piece off the board, then you aren't going to lose a gammon I think, but if you didn't - well, then it's backgammon time. I lost 5 points in this triple gammon nack game on a time out for example:

Nackgammon (netvenus vs. Gordon Shumway)

saeco: I think you're right although I haven't tried it, because I guess it will work similar to the time outs - and I once lost 3 points on a timeout when there was no confrontation on board and noone had a huge edge, so a backgammon was impossible and a gammon close to impossible.

Gordon Shumway: OK, I didn't have the time yet to fix Nackgammon mat files as I was playing too much poker, but I fixed a small bug. So if you experience problems while converting mat files, try if it is fixed by the new version: MATFixer.

playBunny: Thank you for the infos on Snowie .txt format! I think I'll integrate a Nackgammon fix on the weekend. About the pre tags: I hope they're now short enough. In Firefox 2 the scrollbar appears inside the post, so it didn't screw up the page for me...

nabla: Thank you so much, this gives me some motivation to play more backgammon on Brainking again !

Great to hear that this is so helpful!

As it is written in Java, it should be easy for Fencer to integrate it in his .mat generation code.

It might be easy to integrate it, but it would be very bad style as it would mean that BrainKing first produces a broken mat code and then reads and manipulates it to remove the bugs, instead of not producing them in the first place. And I don't even think fixing the bugs right where they are would be any harder

Errr... do you have any plans to fix the Nackgammon files as well ?

Not yet, as I don't really play Nackgammon (so far). I've just looked at a Nackgammon mat file from dailygammon.com at it looks kind of interesting though weird. The first move is always an "illegal play" which sets up the Nackgammon position and the first dice roll, the rest is exactly the same as for Backgammon. I just can't really make too much sense out of this "illegal play" string. Maybe you can? I'll attach a few examples.

All I can tell at first glance is that I would need to analyse the match and game data more seriously than I do now

 5 point match

 Game 1
 Rich In Bunly Goodness : 0          natureseeker : 0
  1) 12: Illegal play (5;0;1;0;0;natureseeker;Rich In Bunly Goodness;\
        0;0;0;1;0;0;-2;-2;0;0;0;4;0;3;0;0;0;-4;4;0;0;0;-3;0;-4;0;0;0;2;2;0;6;3;)\
        63: 24/18 23/20

 [...]

 Game 2
 Rich In Bunly Goodness : 0          natureseeker : 1
  1) 12: Illegal play (5;0;1;0;0;natureseeker;Rich In Bunly Goodness;\
        0;1;0;1;0;0;-2;-2;0;0;0;4;0;3;0;0;0;-4;4;0;0;0;-3;0;-4;0;0;0;2;2;0;6;4;) \
        64: 24/18 24/20

[...]

 Game 3
 Rich In Bunly Goodness : 0          natureseeker : 3
  1) 12: Illegal play (5;0;1;0;0;natureseeker;Rich In Bunly Goodness;\
       0;3;0;1;0;0;-2;-2;0;0;0;4;0;3;0;0;0;-4;4;0;0;0;-3;0;-4;0;0;0;2;2;0;2;1;)\
        21: 23/21 21/20

[...]

 Game 4
 Rich In Bunly Goodness : 0          natureseeker : 4
  1)                                 12: Illegal play \
        (5;0;1;0;1;Rich In Bunly Goodness;natureseeker;\
        1;0;4;1;0;0;-2;-2;0;0;0;4;0;3;0;0;0;-4;4;0;0;0;-3;0;-4;0;0;0;2;2;0;6;1;)
  2) 61: 13/7 8/7                    11: 23/22 23/22 22/21 22/21

A lot of numbers are the same in every line, so I guess that this is just the routine position setup. the last two digits are the dice rolled. But all that stuff in the beginning?

To those of you who want to import backgammon matches from BrainKing into external software and that don't want to wait for the bugs to be fixed: I didn't want to be patient too and so I wrote a small Java application as a temporary workaround. It fixes bugs 1181 and 1534 (But can't do anything about 1533) . In case someone wants to try it, here's a link: http://toedder.net/bk/matfixer.zip.

Czuch: The latter makes more sense if you want ratings to represent a skill level, doesn't it?

Puckish: I would consider every specific advice over a certain move like "go, double now" probably breaking the rules and every general advice like "you all maybe should'nt play too conservative, we need a win to advance" perfectly acceptable. The former is just too specific, giving advice on a single move - and is not comparable to a golfer or any other sportsman for the reasons you gave yourself. The latter is simply a general advice about big-picture strategy, something every team should be allowed to discuss and agree upon. But that is just my "feeling" and others might draw different lines.

There are still 6 players needed in this Backgammon Single Elimination Cube tournament: Gammon Elimination w/ cube

If you want to put some Brains at risk and gamble, this tournament might be for you: http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=27075&trnst=0&u=18197


If you want to take a shot at winning Brains without losing some, have a look at Backgammon For Brains

coan.net: Ah ok... thanks !

coan.net: OK, I just thought that a backgammon would result in 3 points, not 5... at least that's how I understand the rules:

* Single game (1 point) - the winner's opponent has borne off at least one piece.
* Gammon (2 points) - the opponent hasn't borne off any pieces.
* Backgammon (3 points) - the opponent hasn't borne off any pieces and still has some pieces either on the bar or in the winner's home area (the six pipes where the winner bears off own pieces).

Or did I miss some extra modifications or something that affects the amount of points?

I wonder how my opponent could get 5 points for this game: Nackgammon (netvenus vs. Gordon Shumway)

Gammon Elimination w/ cube

Puckish: I don't think using a guide is cheating at all. It wouldn't be if you'd read and memorize it, so why not have a look at one from time to time? I think cheating starts where guides aren't capable of covering the complexity of situations, and where you have to make different calculations for individual situations - and use software for that, because it exceeds your own capablities. Every information which fits on a piece of paper is legally usable, I'd say. But I don't know ;-)