Gnu Backgammon vs. Snowie Openings, Part 2

by Douglas Zare
1 May 2009

Douglas Zare

Gnu Backgammon and Snowie are both very strong, but in about 15% of responses to the opening roll, they disagree with each other, or with rollouts. Let's continue our survey, using long Gnu Backgammon rollouts as the referee. Again, I won't mention every interesting decision, but if I skip a decision, you can assume that Snowie 3-ply and Gnu 2-ply evaluations agree with long rollouts.

A Puzzle

First, something unrelated. I'd like to point out a puzzle which reminded me of backgammon, and of the Rolling Pigs game played at some backgammon tournaments. This is problem #232 from the Project Euler site. This site has programming exercises with mathematical themes. Almost all of the problems require some programming in addition to mathematics.
 

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Proceed to Step Two

Article text Copyright © 1999-2009 Douglas Zare and GammonVillage Inc.

Feedback about this article:

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Subject: Re: Gnu Backgammon vs. Snowie Openings, Part 2

From: hhpete   

Date: 03 May 2009 09:39 EST

Very nice survey of opening replies, thanks Doug!

PS

What is meant here?

"Given the choice of playing 24/18 and 13/7, I almost always choose 13/7, but unstacking is sometimes right."

I for my part almost always split and tend to overlook a bunch of the correct unstackings.

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