frolind: Thanks but it is to time comsumming.just go look at them.

THE HIT MAN:

frolind: Thats odd its working ok now

THE HIT MAN: My eyes may be going bad, but sometimes I swear the dice change in the course of a move. I will read them as 3-2 but after the first click they are 3-3. Since the numbers are always similar, I assume it's my own eyesignt or inattentiveness, but maybe something like that is happening to you also.

alanback: LOL could be.Will old age do that to you he he LOL

i do that sometimes to hehe, or i'll look at my opponents dice by accident

yesterday i played on playsite.com for the first time .. i wanted to play backgammon with the cube :)

it was a 3 points match

i lost the first game, i lost the second game

then the game told me in the third game we couldnt use the doubling cube (which i understand as i would always have offered a double as it would make no difference to me if i would lose with 1 or 2 points, but it would make a difference if i would win)

i won that game (yay! :))

so it was then 2-1 for my opponent

in the next game .. the doubling cube was allowed though .. which was a bit weird to me ..

so i offered to double about halfway the game .. which he declined, so i won that game as well and ended up at 2-2

are you allowed to double when the score is 2-1 ??
it only had an advantage for me .. the game would already win the match for my opponent .. but if doubled it would also win the match for me ..
the doubling only had an advantage for me in this case

i lost the last game (which he started with 4 doubles in a row .. growl! ;))

but it made me wonder about the cube

Hrqls: In matches we use a rule called the crawford rule, which says that doubling isn't allowed in the first game after one player has reached one-away (2 in a match to 3, 4 in a match to 5, etc.). After that game doubling is allowed again.
In your 1-2 game, your opponent should drop if you are a favourite, since by dropping he would be 50-50 to win the game from the score 2-2 (assuming equal strength).

Hrqls: That's the Crawford rule, which states that if one player is 1 point away from winning, you can't use the doubling cube during the first game where the player is 1 point away from winning. But one can use the cube on any subsequent games.

frolind & AbigailII: ah thanks .. it was called the 'crawford rule' indeed .. i didnt remember .. but it made me think of cindy indeed ;)

i can understand why it is not allowed on the first game after a player is 1 point away from winning .. but why allow it again after that first game ? the advantage for the other player is still there

i wasnt favourite (less than 10 steps ahead on him after my turn and a lot of steps to go :)) when i offered the doubling at 1-2 .. but he accepted anyway .. i guessed he would as he was playing very defensive in his games as well .. he didnt dare the risk (although he was building a nice block just before my home .. so i saw some problems with that and think he was the favourite :))

so the rule was applied correctly it seems .. i just cant see the logic to allow the doubling on any subsequent games :)

Hrqls: Here's a couple of posts by Trice and Wolsey regarding this:
http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+667
http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+246

frolind: On the other hand, if the cube were taken out of play, the player
who is behind would have to win a bunch of undoubled games in order to
recover. This would give being one point away from winning too much value.

i think being one point away from winning should be valued this high .. the battle to reach that amount of points has been done .. and won by the player who is only one point away from winning ..

i think it would be the same as to give a player a chance to pass a 6-wide block (maybe just by throwing 6+6 or something like that :)) .. because the block is too powerful

If the Crawford rule remained in effect for the rest of the match, this would make it too hard to catch up, which would give too large a reward for a lucky early win.

hmm .. true .. i forgot about the luck .. a player could be lucky enough to reach that 'one point away from winning' .. it doesnt have to because of a 'battle'

it's just one more thing that has to be explained to people who are new to match play

hehe .. thats me .. and proving it :)

proposed replacing it with the rule that you have to win by two points (like in tennis, etc.) This rule would also eliminate a lot of the 'anomolous' cube action that comes up near the end. The problem was that organizers objected that a match could go on 'forever' with the players swapping one-point leads. I kind of like the idea anyway. But no one else does ;-)

i do! .. great idea!

(i play squash .. and always have the idea i can still win although i might be 8-0 behind in points .. in squash at 8-8 the player who is not serving has the choice to finish the game at 9 points (as normal) or at 10 points .. that might be a nice option for backgammon as well .. when the player is 2 points from winning and the other player is 1 point from winning .. then the player can chose to add 1 more to the total amount of points to be reached ?)

frolind: Of course, that's WALTER Trice, not EDWARD Trice - one for the 10x8 board followers here to snigger about :)

WhiteTower: Of course. :)

frolind: i was confused at first as well .. but noticed when i read the pages :)

thanks

i learned something new for the cube!!!

i always offered a double when i was in the lead .. and sometimes to get a psychological advantage :)

but now i had my opponent in the lead .. and wondered why he didnt offer a double (he was at 2 points in a 4 points match) ... of course i would have declined as he was far in the lead .. bringing the score to 3 points for him

it turned out he was more experienced than me .. as i didnt offer the double .. but played the game to the end .. and backgammoned me to get 2 points to win the match

so for all other people who start playing with the cube ... the cube isnt the only way to get 2 points ... you can also finish before your opponent has a piece off the board .. and thereby win 2 points :)

Hrqls: http://xfriis.dk/maxfriis/bg/double.html

frolind: thanks ... a good read ... have to calculate the chances when i have a bit more time .. so i can fully understand .. nice link :)

Hrqls:

and if one of your pieces is stuck in your opponents home when he bears off ... its a backgammon and worth 3 points or 3 times the cube value ... your description of 2 pts is called a gammon

lovelysharon: true .. you are correct .. glad he didnt backgammon me :) *phew*

(although it wouldnt have mattered for the match ... just for my pride ;))

why are most matches an odd number of points ... yesterday i played a match (and 2 rematches) with someone for 4 points .. does that change the tactics a lot ?

Hrqls: The score affects your play. 0-0 in a match to 4 is equivalent to to 1-1 in a match to 5, or 55-55 in a match to 59. So when talking about a score we often say 4away-4away, making the length irrelevant.

Odd match lengths are the most common, both online and offline. I don't know why.

frolind: ah thats a nicer way to look at it indeed :)

what are the differences in tactics whith an odd number of points from the finish or an even number of points ?

do you want to main an odd number away ?

Hrqls: Read the articles at http://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?menu+matchplay

AbigailII: thanks!!!

I saw where Fencer said that it is okay to play with/ use programs on this site, and that programs would not help in dice games anyway.

Is this true? It seems to me that it is possible for a program to help in a backgammon game.... just because it uses dice does not mean that the game is decided soley on luck...

Czuch Chuckers: A program would absolutely help a player. Because of the dice, a poor player could beat a great player (such as a the programs snowie and gnubg) in a single game. But in the long term a program will have way better results than the rest of us.

LOL, I have downloaded the gnubg program, played 10 5-point games with it, won all of them and the session analysis tells me I'm playing like a beginner, marking 1 or two of my moves in each game as very bad...interesting...a lot of stuff to learn I suppose...

Pedro Martínez: Keep at it, you will get better....

Pedro Martínez: Try the tutor mode. It will point out your errors while you're playing. Make sure the settings are decent.

You won 10 5-point matches???????? WOW! Interesting...... And it says you play like a beginner? So your luck should be huge in these 10 5-point games! But this is really impossible (or very difficult) to have in at least 50 games, a huge luck........
On what level GNUBG was playing........? It offers a strong opponent at Expert, World class and above. Advanced or below is just bad (or not so good)..........

Pedro Martínez: What settings do you have it on? As installed it plays weaker than it's capable of. However, ten 5-point matches is still hot stuff.

I usually advise people to set Supremo for Chequer play and World Class for Cube decisions in both Settings/Analysis and Settings/Evaluation. Go higher if you have plenty of patience or a stonking fast machine.

Don't forget to do Settings/Save settings afterwards otherwise it will lose the changes when you exit.

I have no idea what settings I have it on..I just clicked new game, set it to 5-point matches and played...where can I see the level of the computer?

I have just finished another two 5-point mathces, won both of them but now it shows that in the first one, I was playing like and Intermediate (? the Czech translation of the program is not so good so I hope it's intermediate) and like a World Class in the other one...no very bad moves this time but a few bad moves...it seems that the number of "very bad moves" is decisive as for the final determination of your level of playing...

<Go to SETTINGS->PLAYERS and choose Player 0 or 1 depending on where the GNUBG was playing (The other normally would say human).
Then see the Checker play what setting it has........(Expert, Advanced, Beginner.....,etc)

I have to add that winning 12 straight 5-point matches against GNUBG in a level of more than Advanced (Expert or more) would make you the best Backgammon player on the galaxy with a huge difference from the 2nd. With few words: It's impossible!
So i guess you played with Intermediate or something like that........

Chessmaster1000: It says "expert"... *shrugs*
Now I lost 5-2...intermediate...

Did you save the games..........?
No! (I guess--All beginners with a program don't save nothing!)

No, I didn't...I didn't even know it was possible...it's the first game-playing program I've ever used...LOL

All about gnubg

So I downloaded this software and tried playing, but it hangs after about 10 moves and the only way out is shutting it down from the Task Manager. Anyone else experience that?

What Windows version are you using........?
This is most probably a graphic card problem......

Windows 2000 SP3. The game doesn't seem like one that needs a great graphics card.

Yes it doesn't........But some graphic cards probably don't "fit" with it......
Of course there are millions of other possible reasons that it doesn't run.......

Well I'm on a laptop, so the graphics card is probably strange. Anyway I've tried about a million settings changes etc etc and it crashes every time. Pity, it seems like a good game - I guess I'll never know.

I have the same problem. After 5-10 minutes and when i'm trying to maximize the window it crushes!
When i asked what is the possible cause of the problem they said: update your graphic card and get Windows XP! (I have ME)

grenv: I've run it on a laptop with XP SP2 with no problems.

Send an email to the mailing list.
http://www.gnubg.org/index.php?itemid=11
I got quick and helpful response from 2 members of the gnubg team when I used it.

pgt: I'm on Windows 2000, which is notoriously crappy for playing games. Time to upgrade to a real operating system it seems.

If you are obsessed of having GNUBG i can e-mail you an old but VERY STABLE version of it. It has almost the same strength (the newer one is a little stronger) but not the newest great graphics and all the fancy things! Comparing the old with new:
Old strength = 98
New strength = 100
Old total features and graphics = 12
New total features and graphics = 100

The whole package is arounf 12 MB so my e-mail will compain with a dial-up connection but if you want it, i can send it..........?!?!?!??!

Thanks, I'll let you know. I may change the OS first. :)

I am wondering what was the longest anti backgammon game here so far, without prolonging for purpose. I found so far: http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=353288
It was resigned so it would last few moves more. I know Fencer can find the longest game with one simple database operation