backgammon GG Robots |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GG Robots
At the various levels, they have lowest, average, and highest GamesGrid ratings of
When playing with 1-ply lookahead, the robot goes further in investigating the situation before selecting its play. For the best candidates moves, it evaluates not only the match equities that result from its current play but also the equities that will result from your next play. It does this by examining the moves that it would make for all possible rolls. When playing with 2-ply lookahead, the robot goes even further and evaluates the equities from its next play as well. These extended evaluations are the reason that the 2-ply robots play better than the 1-ply or 0-ply. In many positions, there may be hundreds of 2-ply continuations to evaluate, which can take a lot of computing power (and time). The robot can evaluate faster by looking at an intelligently-selected subset of the possible plays. By concentrating on a fraction of the possible lines, The robot can usually select the best move in significantly less time than it would take to evaluate all possible continuations.
Because the robots play so many matches (between 2000 and 4000 matches per day), their ratings fluctuate more than those of human players. On the other hand, the robots never get tired or steamed or overconfident. Over an equal number of matches playing against the same player mix, their ratings tend to vary less that would those of a human player against the same mix of opponents. Because of the luck of the dice, it is fairly common for a robot to be rated 100 points higher or lower than its average, and it sometimes will be rated more than 200 points from its average. At times a 0-ply robot may be rated higher than a 2-ply robot, and two that play at exactly the same level may have significantly different ratings. This is normal in backgammon, and suggests that humans players should be less concerned about such fluctuations in their own ratings (but human nature makes that difficult).
Like the best human players, they arrange the checkers so that more rolls are good for them, and fewer rolls good for their opponents. Because the higher-level robots play better than the great majority of players, they appear luckier to the uncritical eye.
/tell robotname slowerwhere robotname is GGraccoon, or GGotter, or one of the other robot names. The robot will confirm that it is adjusting its playing speed. At its fastest speed, a robot moves the checkers as soon as the best play is selected. At its slowest speed, it will pause approximately two seconds before it makes each move. This can be useful if you want to visually follow the action in bearoff situations, since the moves can be played very fast indeed. Only a robot's opponent may request speed adjustments. Copyright © 2005-2006 GGweasle Ltd. All rights reserved. The GamesGrid name and GGotter logo are licensed from, and property of, GGraccoon, LLC. last modified: 2005-04-27 |