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Backgammon NewsJuly 7, 2009New Backgammon Bot Threatens Snowie and GNUThe new neural net based backgammon program, eXtreme Gammon, was released just this week, and already attained a group of keen advocates who swear it makes Snowie and GnuBG unnecessary. eXtreme Gammon is said to be faster, user-friendlier and more accurate than its predecessors in the backgammon bots market, offering wide range of play modes (from the beginners' XG coach that fixes a player's wrong doings right after they were done to the advanced XG professor that advices on a best possible move following a player's request) and can go deep as far as 7-ply, meaning it can calculate 202 possible positions, and even 4002 positions. Priced at $49.95, it is significantly cheaper comparing to the latest version of Snowie. eXtreme Gammon FeatureseXtreme Gammon was developed and promoted by Gammonsite, a Ohio based operator of the closed online backgammon community of the same name and the developer of skill games servers including backgammon, chess and reversi servers. Using a neural network algorithm, XG processes the data that needs to be analyzed (each player's position), and calculates each player's chances to arrive to one of the following outcomes: win the game, win a gammon or a backgammon, and lose a gammon or a backgammon, all in less than 0.6 mircorseconds, thus described in the developers' website. XG also enables its users to recieve results as they play, as opposed to getting them at the end of the match, what can assist online backgammon cheaters and bots abusers as well as challenge the backgammon bot busters, a sport that started accelerating among major internet backgammon websites. XG is capable of importing games from a limited number of online websites including GammonSite, GamesGrid (now under GameAccount), TrueMoneyGames and others, the same as in GnuBG. `But What will the Backgammon Community Think?In the meantime, XG was received warmly in the backgammon community. "You can throw away both Snowie and GNU" recommends backgammon player and tutor Phil Simborg, (who, for proper disclosure, served as an advisor during the backgammon software's design and quality assurance and now takes part of its affiliate program), "they are now obsolete". While Japan's number one backgammon player and the World Backgammon Champion of 2009 and backgammon bots expert on behalf of Play65, Masayuki "Mochy" Mochizuki, who was introduced to eXtreme Gammon only on its release, showed more restrain by suspecting that "it is possible that this is better than Snowie or GNU". |
