AlliumCepa: Had both players turned on autopass before the game started? Otherwise, it won't work.

AlliumCepa: Was there any in-game chat going on during those moves? That will also stop auto-pass from working

AlliumCepa: Well it is one of the "reasons" why Fencer did not want to do autopass in the first place - he is afraid that the users would be unable to have a conversation if the game is autopassing. So he put in this thing that is called an autopass, but I believe it will not work if there is chat going on. I don't think it is documented anywhere.

coan.net: This needs to be explained a bit more thoroughly please?

I just think the current version of autopass needs to be scraped, and put in its place is a proper autopass - that will work in all games where a "pass" can be made.

I would think a simple auto message of "Your opponent had no move, so the game came back to you.". Any messages should just be shown when the opponent does have there next possible move. And then an auto message to the person who passed would be "You had no move(s) on the ## last move(s), so the system autopassed for you".

Plus each person can decide if they want the system to autopass for them. So for example, if I choose to auto pass but my opponenet does not - if it comes to me and I have to pass, then I should be able to autopass. If it goes to my opponenet and they choose not to autopass, then they can take the time to hit the "pass" button. I don't see why the current system will let 1 person dictate how the other person players their autopass.

And again, all games that have pass - Gammon & Ludo are the big 2 that come to mind.

= = = = =

Then for gammon games with cube, what I would like to see is when a person gets there first roll/double - then pass option if they are blocked, a little button to say "Roll & Autopass until next possible move" - so that will automaticly choose the roll & then pass until they are able to move again. (so then after they move, they will again have to roll & choose the option again if they are back into a pass position after making a move on the board.)

Autopass would be a great feature for this site - but I just don't consider what is here right now to be autopass... just a very weak version of it.

coan.net: Everything you said !

Plus making forced moves automatically, even when they are not "passes". That for all games without exception. This last request should probably give rise to a separate personal setting, since I guess that some Ludo players could be happy with autopass but not with autoplay.

nabla: Yea, autoplay would be another nice request - even though personally I'm not sure if I would use it, but I can see many doing so.

For checkers for example, a person only has 1 move - 1 jump, then yea - might as well make the move for you. For Ludo - well many turns in a game are only 1 option (maybe around 30% maybe? - just a guess) - Add that to auto-pass, then you all of a sudden turn around 1/2 the game for the computer to play for you.

So personally, I would have to debate with myself to use autoplay, but again - would be a great addition to the autopass to this game site - and can see many people using both.

coan.net: then you all of a sudden turn around 1/2 the game for the computer to play for you....

That doesnt say much for the games popularity

coan.net: Well said!! In support of this suggestion I am going to disable my autopass option until a better version is implemented. Anyone who doesn't like it should do the same, otherwise Fencer can say 'look how many people are using the autopass, they must like it'

Along with an autoplay idea, i would like to see the ability for the server to determine the single legal play for a given checker. This will eliminate the need for the Swap dice option in all but the cases where a single checker can use either die.

jryden: I ain't going to disable my autopass - the rare occassions where I do get an opponent that has autopass enabled, I don't want to lose.

And I'll continue to delay moving in an autopass situation when my opponent hasn't enabled autopass - I marked all days in December as vacation days for no other reason to not have to move in a hand full of games where all I can do is pass, but where my opponent insists on me pointlessly hitting a button.

Backgammon (Mal 4 Inara vs. mangue)
move 17
I cannot swap dies, please explain why

mangue: The rules are that if you can play both dice, then you must do so. If you play the 5 first, then you are blocked and cannot play the 3 any more (while if you play the 3 first, you can bear off with the 5).

thank you

Unfortunately I found out that ********** was using a bot to play his moves in Backgammon and Nackgammon games. As Fencer understandably won't to act on it until it has been confirmed by other users, and as ********** has mainly played private games, I appeal to his recent opponents that are acquainted with the usage of GNU backgammon (the best free program and the one that ********** uses). Here are the steps to reproduce :

1) Choose a recent finished private match that you played with ********** .

2) Click "download MAT code" at the top right of the game screen and save the file to your disk.

3) Start GNU backgammon.

4) Go to Settings / Analysis and choose the "Expert" level for both checker play and cube decisions.

5) Click the Import button, choose the .mat format and your saved .mat file.

6) Go to Analyse / Analyse match. GNU will analyse all played moves.

7) Go to Analyze / Game statistics - and not match statistics, because there is a bug in the BK import format that swaps players every two games. Browse the games. In each of them, I bet that you will see one player with a human error rate (you) and one with an error rate of virtually nil ( ********** ).

Before jumping to the logical conclusion, you should know that the world's best players have an "Equivalent Snowie error rate" around -2 on a good day. You can check that for yourself by downloading world-class matches from here : http://www.hardyhuebener.de/engl/matches.html

On a last note, "expert" is a lowish standard in GNU backgammon, and I have seen ********** play a move that was also played by the expert level, but discarded as a big blunder by the "world class" level (which analyses 2-ply instead of 0-ply).

Thanks by advance for your input !

********** Edited out users name. **********

nabla:  If he's using a bot, why doesn't he play better?

alanback: He does ! Never trust the BK rating :-)

nabla: who is he?????

Puckish: Even though general talk about cheating is OK on a public board, accusing a person of it is not. A private message to nabla would be best since there is no restriction like that in private chat.

coan.net: I apologize, I realize that I should at least have given a link to the player's profile instead of naming him or her. This way, everyone could have chosen to click it or not. But I guess it would not even have been OK this way.

The question is what we do about it. Nobody cares ? I shouldn't even have told ?

By the way, this is definitely not a general talk about cheating. It is a very specific one about one isolated case. On a general and more positive note, I would say that I am pretty convinced that all the other people I played backgammon with here were playing by themselves.

nabla:  I am not! Oh, nevermind, I thought you said "with" ...

nabla: I for one am glad you shared this knowledge with us. I would propose that we resign or decline games with him, or anyone else known to cheat - not out of nastiness, but as a message that on BK we like to play with ourselves.... I mean BY ourselves!

nabla: The most appropriate action to take is to PM Fencer. You are certainly welcome to have a discussion about the specific player in a fellowship, if the big boss allows it. It just isn't fair to bring these accusations to a public board. I sympathize, I have no patience for cheaters myself, and it is frustrating when you are a true game lover to play people that you suspect are cheating.

Good luck.

rod03801: The PM to Fencer has indeed been my first action. He didn't have the time to investigate the case by himself, and we all know how fond he is of backgammon. So he agreed with my proposal of seeking for confirmation by other players on the backgammon board.

Quite possibly I misunderstood him for naming the accused player, but I hadn't thought of any other way. Remember that ********** is mainly playing private games and that only his/her opponents are able to see them. OK, now maybe there is another way. Add the instruction 0) : PMing me to know the handle of the player.

Binabik: I agree, except that nobody should resign against him/her before the information has been double-checked. I am sure of what I am saying, but I don't expect to be trusted automatically.

nabla:  Why resign and give him the ratings boost he wants, if this is true?

I'd resign because I am already playing more than enough live games against GNU, I don't need to log on Brainking for that. But if you would still enjoy playing, that is OK with me too.

As for that person's ego, frankly, I don't know how it works. It is true that I would be more ashamed to achieve a high rating by being GNU's proxy than by having everybody resigning to me.

alanback: I guess the goal would be for him/her to only get resignations - the only way to get him/her to change his/her ways or leave....

I think it's wonderful!

Not everyone has a bot at home. At VogClub there is a room just for playing bots (there are three, varying from walkover to mean, cruel bastard) and it's well attended. At Fibs there are anything between half a dozen and a dozen bots and they get a lot of attention. This place needs a bot!

A programmatic interface makes the most sense but if some human fancies typing in moves for the bot then that's great. Three cheers to Botman!

Mind you, a proper bot should accept all invitations from any player, rated or unrated, and for any match length or type.

playBunny: That is a consistent point of view, too

But I would add two further conditions in order to be a proper bot :
- It should be advertized as such in a very clear manner (even more accessible than the player profile).
- It should not enter tournaments, because no one should be forced to play against it.

nabla: Forms of cheating are probably more widespread than we realize too!

I think you would hear more of an outcry over what you have uncovered if other people were not doing the same thing themselves, even if maybe to a lessor degree.

For example, I was recently involved in a couple of games with a certain player, and we were both making moves consistently one evening, and in one game I offered them a double. I was able to see that they were viewing this game, but they never made a move, and then they were off the site, with their last action of "viewing this game".

Now, coupled with this recent claim of cheating fresh in my mind, I wonder if this person has taken this game to a program to determine if accepting a double is the right move or not? It seems quite obvious to me that is what has happened.

So, I am sure in my mind that even if people are not cheating by playing every move by the aid of a program, that many people are surly using these aids to assist in certain tough move situations or like the one I just described

Puckish: I think that cheating is far from obvious in the case you described (compared with the evidence nabla was able to provide).  You probably wouldn't like to play against me--I often take a lot of time to evaluate tough double offers, or when deciding to make such offers.  I spent nearly an hour on one this morning, and would hate to think that anyone would conclude that I'm obviously cheating.  Some of us just work hard.

Puckish:I think it's a little paranoid to assume that's the only possible explanation. I will often put a game aside when there is a difficult decision to make.  That's frequently the occasion for me to go to bed and think about it when I'm fresh.

puckish: I agree completely with wetware and alanback. Getting a bot's-eye view of a position only takes a few minutes, if that, so the longer someone takes the more likely they are to be having a personal ponder. I've sometimes visited and revisited a game several times over a few days (DailyGammon time controls permit this), each time deciding to defer the decision until it becomes clearer (or rather for me to become clearer, lol. It's amazing how one day's foolish "Yeah, I'll get the rolls" optimism becomes another day's "That would be madness!" rational thinking. )

nabla: I'd tend to agree that a bot should be clearly labelled as a bot. At Fibs it's not always clear but, as there's a clearly established bot ethos, it doesn't really matter too much, especially as there's a full range of abilities exhibited by them. "Bot" doesn't mean perfect by any means.

As for tournaments, well, you know my interest in getting DG "bot standardised", but here, where the rating system is *ahem*, there is no value in that. Even if there were, tournaments wouldn't be ideal anyway as the players are self-selected and so uniformity of the pool is absent. And so I'd agree that there's no need for it to play tournaments. I'd almost suggest that a bot should only play unrated except that people could have fun playing one-pointers against it and sucking points out of it! ;-)

Puckish: Frankly, I am rather touchy (who said paranoid?) about computer use, and I find it highly unlikely that computer help is widespread here in backgammon games. As I said, I rather think that the case I disclosed is an unique one. It is certainly a very different story on sites where money can be won.

The behaviour you described would also fit me. Like alanback, when facing a tough move, I often like to get a night of sleep over it, and my ideas are sometimes clearer the next day. Or I see that the move requires a lot of counting, and keep it for when I have the time and availability to conduct the whole calculation.

Moreover, the way GnuBg works, it is a bit tedious to enter a specific position, while it is very easy to open saved games and enter moves one after the other. So a cheater is more likely to consult the bot for every move, even though a "clever" cheater would make himself tough to detect by introducing enough mistakes to stay with a "human" error rate.

I see that my made-anonymous accusation is likely to open speculation. So I will at least say that I have had a PM conversation with the cheater about it quite some time before posting here, so he/she know about it, and nobody else should feel that he/she could be targetted.

playBunny: You are right that a bot should also play unrated. I didn't think of mentioning it because of the BK rating system being *ahem* as soon as different match lengthes are possible.

What are the thoughts about using an opening move guide in games here? Is that cheating?

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 ;-)

Timeout

My opponent timed out, having already borne off 1 checker.  (Let's ignore my incredibly hopeless position for the moment.)  I was trailing in the match 1-0 before that happened. Now the match score is given as 3-1.  It appears that the server awarded me 3 points when I should have had at most 1. 

alanback: I think at one time, it was discussed and it was decided on if someone times out, they lose the max amount of points (backgammoned) since they could still possible be in such a bad position that they will be put into that position and you would not want someone to time out on purpose just to be able to save a point or so.

NOW in this case, once a checker is already borne off, if a time out occurs, I agree that it should only be a 1 point lose.

You should add it to the Bug Tracker: http://brainking.com/en/BugTracker

Gammon Elimination w/ cube

Can anyone explain the score in this match?  I'm playing a number of games against this opponent so I'm not sure but this score doesn't even look familiar and makes no sense based on the games history...

http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=2977234

jryden: Looks like some sort of bug - but when I look at the tournament, it shows a similar bug that is being reported on the BrainKing.com board

BackGammon - Cardinal's Masters #1 (>2300)

My guess there might be more games not showing up - maybe got archived in Fencers recent work. Hopefully once Fencer gets on next, he will fix things.

coan.net: Yep, this game is from that tournament...okay, so I guess the score is right but the games are just missing from the history. Strange mistake...I hope fencer gets on it soon.

jryden: It looks like it is fixed now - it shows all past 5 games between you 2 to show the correct score.