Hi Ian Thanks for writing up all the details. You’ve answered all my questions well and I now understand why there are no bot tournaments. I was kind of looking for rankings and competitions between programs using a protocol similar to UCI for chess. I was trying to satisfy my curiosity regarding the techniques involved in backgammon programming but now I think I will settle for playing and improving myself. Thanks to all who replied.
/Daniel On 8 Aug 2023 at 10:46 +0200, Ian Shaw <[email protected]>, wrote: > Hi Daniel, > > There is a mechanism for using GnuBg to plug in another playing engine, but > I've no idea how it works or even whether it has been implemented other than > the setting being available. You can find it in the GUI under Settings, > Players, External. > > set player external - Have another process make all moves for a player > Usage: set player <player> external <filename> > > I don't know what the file is supposed to contain. > > > There are no recent bot competitions, and the formats there used to be were > of such short duration that there was nothing meaningful to be gained from > the results. Frank Berger took BGBlitz to some, and he reads sees this forum, > so maybe he can give you some information. You need to play thousands or > millions of games to distinguish between the bots, because they are all so > similar in strength, and that doesn’t fit well with formal competitions. > > The strongest current bots, ranked by public perception, are: > 1. Extreme Gammon (XG) > 2. GnuBg > 3. BGBlitz by Frank Berger. > > Older bots such as Snowie and Jellyfish are no longer underdevelopment, and I > understand XG is headed the same way. I'm not aware of any other bots that > approach these five in playing strength. Snowie is about as string as GnuBG. > Jellyfish is older and weaker than the other four. I think older bots such as > Tesauro's TDGammon and others are significantly weaker than these five. > > My personal view is that if XG is stronger, it is by very little. It's main > advantages are that people many prefer the GUI, and that it is faster for > evaluations and rollouts. I think it has some inherent design advantages in > that it was designed for multi-threaded operation. GnuBG was designed before > that era, so the multi-threaded features have been retro-fitted, for example, > use of SSE and AVX instructions, multi-threaded rollouts. > > I hope this helps. (I'm not one of the developers; I've just been lurking > here a long time.) > Ian Shaw > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Daniel > Lidström > Sent: Monday, August 7, 2023 9:49 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Using GnuBG to test own bot > > Hi > > Is it possible to use GnuBG to test an own implementation of a bot? I’ve been > looking for up-to-date info on backgammon programming but haven’t found much. > Most sources are old. Where can I find current info? For example, which > programs are competing nowadays. Which are strongest? Are there active bot > competitions? > > /Daniel
