Do you know Backgammon? If not, it's a board game for two players, and it's great. Trust me. And now go to the Backgammon Galore (best BG site around) to find out all about it.
But I guess most people do know Backgammon, or they think they do. And like me some years ago they think "isn't that the fun little game you play with dice - nice but all about getting lucky dice rolls". So let me get this out of the way:
Backgammon is not a game of chance
well, actually it is, after all, you're rolling dice and then play a move depending on them. But the perception that many people have about Backgammon is that chance is the dominating factor of the game. I used to think that way for a long time; I've played a game of Backgammon now and then, thought I'd be reasonable good, but when I needed a real challenge I went to play Chess or something.
Then I got Jellyfish. And my Backgammon life changed forever :-)
You don't know Jellyfish? Jellyfish is, to my knowledge, one of the first Backgammon programs that based on neural net technology, and there's a free version of it to download. I don't want to dive into explaining why this again is interesting from a computer science point of view, just let me tell you that neural nets seem to be particularly well suited for Backgammon. As a result, the top Backgammon programs play as good as the best Backgammon players. And you can download them from e.g. jelly.effect.no (dated freeware version of Jellyfish), from www.gnubg.org (Gnu Backgammon which is freeware), or www.bgblitz.com (BG Blitz free version).
I did that, downloaded the Jellyfish player, and got beaten. Over and over. It was like magic, the dice that the game rolled always seemed to fit perfectly, while mine were often awkward, leaving me in unfortunate positions too often. My first reaction was mistrust; I switched from computer generated dice to rolling the dice manually. And got beaten. Over and over. Again.
After a while of this I needed to rethink my opinion on Backgammon. Yes, it is based on rolling dice, but it's 90% strategy and only 10% luck. From then on I was hooked, even bought Jellyfish (the mean marketing there was that you get Jellyfish Player for free which beats the hell out of you, but in order to get an insight into its thinking you have to pay). Only then I started to learn about the finer details of Backgammon (I recommend Bill Robertie's great Backgammon books; as a starter to show you what strong players are thinking, you can take a free look at extremely interesting annotated matches at the Backgammon galore.
What Backgammon gives you is the same level of strategic planning you have in Chess (e.g. should I play solid or go for a Blitz, should I attack his back men or advance my back men, should I hit him even if this exposes some of my men, and so on), but due to the dice you can't simply think ahead so far but rely on intuition and experience when deciding for a move. This combination of skill and luck is quite unique. And without backgammon software I would never have even found out about the depth of this game. Isn't that strange?
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Posts mit dem Label Backgammon werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Dienstag, November 07, 2006
Backgammon for Mobile Phones: BGBlitz 2 Go
What's the point of a mobile phone without solid backgammon software running on it? The answer is - of course - that there's no point. You can make phone calls (rarely fun), write short messages (very rarely fun) or download ring tones (certainly no fun). See? Almost all the fun you can have with a mobile phone (apart from participating in the mobile phone throwing world championships, maybe) has to do with playing a good game of backgammon against it.
Not long ago, in the "dark age of mobile phone backgammon" that is the time before November 1, 2006, it was very difficult finding a good backgammon for a mobile phone. I'm owning a Nokia N93, which is actually a pretty decent mobile phone in terms of tech specs and capabilities, but the only backgammons I could find for it were ones that certainly don't have a neural net in their heart and that don't seem to support n-game tournaments (which, together with the doubling cube, add another level of strategy). Poor me.
But now the dark ages are over, there's "BG Blitz 2 Go", a Java Backgammon available for many mobile phones. And it has all the features I need.
BGB2GO is actually the "smaller brother" of BG Blitz, a world class backgammon program for PCs and Macs, so rest assured that it knows all the rules including e.g. the Crawford rule and that it plays a strong game of backgammon together with good intuition about when to double.
Feature check:
But rest assured that unless you're a champion BG Blitz 2 Go is a great opponent for you; I've had tremendous fun in some of those 14 matches so far, and I'm looking forward to the next matches just as well. Backgammon is great for a short game in between, and BGB2Go is the best Backgammon you can possibly want for your Java enabled mobile phone.
Right now the authors seem to be collecting a compatibility list; there's 22 known mobile devices on which it is known to work, including e.g. the Nokia 6230(i), the Sony Ericsson K800i and many other recent Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones (for details check the compatibility list - the German one seems to be much more up to date than the English one).
Pricing: there is a free demo version that will randomly quit every 2nd game. The license costs €12,95.
Some time later: I'm still very happy with BGBlitz 2 Go. So far I've won 10 matches, lost 16, but I'm leading with 112:97 points. I like it a lot that you can just leave BG Blitz 2 Go, and when you come back you continue your game in the same position as before.
Highly recommended.
Not long ago, in the "dark age of mobile phone backgammon" that is the time before November 1, 2006, it was very difficult finding a good backgammon for a mobile phone. I'm owning a Nokia N93, which is actually a pretty decent mobile phone in terms of tech specs and capabilities, but the only backgammons I could find for it were ones that certainly don't have a neural net in their heart and that don't seem to support n-game tournaments (which, together with the doubling cube, add another level of strategy). Poor me.
But now the dark ages are over, there's "BG Blitz 2 Go", a Java Backgammon available for many mobile phones. And it has all the features I need.
BGB2GO is actually the "smaller brother" of BG Blitz, a world class backgammon program for PCs and Macs, so rest assured that it knows all the rules including e.g. the Crawford rule and that it plays a strong game of backgammon together with good intuition about when to double.
Feature check:
- plays money games or n-game tournaments (n can be set up in the preferences)
- plays according to all rules (well, that's a basic one)
- includes an optional "tutor mode" that warns you in case of blunders and can show you the strongest move.
- shows you the 5 best moves together with their equity (after pressing "7").
- doesn't seem to show you the volatility of a position.
- shows you the pip count if you want.
- automatically executes forced moves for you.
- has a couple of differently looking boards that do their job well.
- offers great statistics (I need those!) about your performance against the game, incl. matches won/lost, points won/lost, longest winning/losing streak.
- has a three (?) playing levels. Expert is strong and fast on my N93; even doubles in complicated positions don't take a second.
- has an outstandingly good "position memory" that is so important for a mobile phone game. Leave the game to do a call or something, come back later, and find your match in exactly the state that it was in before.
But rest assured that unless you're a champion BG Blitz 2 Go is a great opponent for you; I've had tremendous fun in some of those 14 matches so far, and I'm looking forward to the next matches just as well. Backgammon is great for a short game in between, and BGB2Go is the best Backgammon you can possibly want for your Java enabled mobile phone.
Right now the authors seem to be collecting a compatibility list; there's 22 known mobile devices on which it is known to work, including e.g. the Nokia 6230(i), the Sony Ericsson K800i and many other recent Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones (for details check the compatibility list - the German one seems to be much more up to date than the English one).
Pricing: there is a free demo version that will randomly quit every 2nd game. The license costs €12,95.
Some time later: I'm still very happy with BGBlitz 2 Go. So far I've won 10 matches, lost 16, but I'm leading with 112:97 points. I like it a lot that you can just leave BG Blitz 2 Go, and when you come back you continue your game in the same position as before.
Highly recommended.
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