Backgammon websites.

Reputable sites for backgammon don't exist, unfortunately.  Bots eating bots eating bots.

Seem to remember GNU bot is a great player/analyser for free (or nearly nothing, I've certainly owned it)

Wouldn't bother playing anyone for money online though, way too many bots, and it's one game where bots beat humans with no trouble.

In 1980, I was taking computers in college.

At that time, disc space was a premium for the college and we were reminded constantly about the cost.

I sat in the back and used to finish the assignments in the labs in around 15 minutes.  The balance of the time, I spent working on my own projects that I 'hid' by naming as "calculus calculations" etc, so the college thought they were legit.

One was a backgammon program where I taught the computer to play.  Essentially came down to entering and prioritizing strategy.  Was quite the opponent. 

Oh, and how did I get caught?  I was building an "American Football" program where you were the quarterback and would make calls.  The computer would then print out the outcome of the play

7:45 remaining in the half
1st and 10 on your own 30 yard.
Your play call
? Screen pass to fullback
1st and 10
Pass complete for a gain of 8 yards
2nd and 2 on your own 38
7:20 remaining
Your play call
?


Anyways, one day while the rest of the class was struggling with assignements, I crossed the line and instead of saying
TOUCHDOWN!!! 
EXTRA POINT GOOD

it said
TOUCHDOWN!!!
EXTRA POINT GOOD
YOU HAVE NOW BEEN SUSPENDED FOR THREE WEEKS
PLEASE EXIT THE LAB

and the screen went black

Seems I had been sussed

The problem with that story is that the lecturers or whoever caught you, should have seen the situation for what it was and encouraged you further. The world falls apart with the wrong people in charge.

Did any of you ever play on gameaccount backgammon? They changed the bots one day when i was beating the expert bot a lot. Suddenly, the bots were winning with three double 6's in a row, throwing the exact numbers they needed every time. I spoke to one of their customer services person who obviously didn't understand the consequences of what he was saying and openly admitted to them being ****. Apparently, the bots were there for a bit of fun, you werent supposed to win money from them!

:)

bots vs bots.

guess I'm going to have to look for human only tournaments.

I'm a bit surprised that bots haven't killed the whole online poker thing, speaking of this. it can't be a harder game to model than backgammon.

They're getting better, certainly in SNGs they're strong now because it's almost solveable.

The difference with backgammon is that all the information is there and the number of realistic moves per roll is very often only 2 or 3, while with poker there is a degree of incomplete information - although again, this has been reduced with tracking software etc of course.

I suspect poker is easier to model than most people will have you believe though, but backgammon is definitely a lot easier.

The difference with backgammon is that all the information is there and the number of realistic moves per roll is very often only 2 or 3

Yes, but because of the use of dice, the search tree for backgammon is actually pretty large. The tree comprises alternating levels of a few branches corresponding to the few possible moves, and 21 branches, corresponding to the 21 differentt possible dice throws. This creates a large search space which is still too much for today's computers.

i play often online no problems with bots

Thinly veiled "I'm good at Backgammon" thread

baldloaf

The problem with that story is that the lecturers or whoever caught you, should have seen the situation for what it was and encouraged you further. The world falls apart with the wrong people in charge.

I agree but the size of discs were the size of grindstones and the costs were enormous.  I stuck to the task at hand for the balance of the year.

Epilogue:  In Spring, 1981, I was accepted to Concordia University in Montreal.  30 of us into something called "computers and business".  The same professors that killed my NFL and backgammon did give me the recommendation.

In September, 1981, I sat in a room being told by someone that "we were the future of computing in Canada."  I looked left and right at my classmates and wondered if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with these people.

5 weeks later, I quit. 

6 weeks later, I was offered a job with Northern Telecom.  I had been partying since the day I quit and they tracked me down at my girlfriends apartment.  All I had to do was go see the headhunter for lunch and I had a job starting at 24K 1981 dollars. He was leaving that afternoon for Toronto so it was a yes/no that day.

I headed out the door and got to the doors of the restaurant and peered in.  I could spot the computer people through the glass. 

I couldn't do it.  I turned around, walked away and formed a band about two days later retiring from rock'n'roll in 1999.

Always go with your gut.

My friend and I got into similar difficulties in our computer room with something that started as a challenge between us and two other friends. The object was for us to write a series of nested IFs and FOR/NEXTs and so on that the other two couldn't insert stuff into to ruin whatever the trivial program actually was (They weren't allowed to delete stuff so they had to trace all the loops)

This was all fine until I had the bright idea to have a lovely blue screen with a yellow input box to sign in with the rather enticing question "What is your name?" which, when answered would just reset and ask the question again.

Of course, we loaded this space consuming monstrosity up on all the computers in the room and let it there. People who were unaware of what we were doing would come in and type, roughly in order, "John", "John B" ,"fsdadfafa" "F*** This doesn't work" before leaving the terminal.

That all sounds innocent enough, but I'd had the bright idea to save the program each time under the entered name, so not only did we create dozens of files intentionally, but had the knock on effect that whenever someone wanted to copy "John B"s project, they loaded up the program for us and repeated the process.

We were made to remove each file manually when the disk filled up

www.playwsob.com

after some hunting around. mainly using it for qualifying for live tournments.