Snowie Vs JellyFish
rtrbah
context of improving your game??
Rodrigo Andrade
Snowie does rollouts with a live cube, which JF doesn't. With Snowie you can
analyze a whole lot of matches automatically. Snowie allows you to rate
yourself with its ELO system.
The coolest feature ever is the Explorer panel. In it, you can navigate
through your matches, looking for blunders, bad cube decisions, jokers,and
more. You don't have to go through your matches move by move, although the
option is available.
Definitely worth the $350.
RODRIGO
Donald Kahn
>Does anyone have an opinion as to which software is better, in the
>context of improving your game??
I use both. Snowie has more features, but is not suitable (IMO) for
anything less than the fastest (450 mHz) processor.
dk
Hugh McNeil
Donald Kahn wrote:
Snowie does have more features, and these are the ones which give a
learning player a learning edge. If you need an answer instantly, then
you need a 450 Mhz processor. But you also need Snowie if you need the
best answer.
I'm running Snowie on a 200Mhz Intel Overdrive, and I have to wait two
seconds while I'm playing it at three Ply, its strongest level. A good
investment in time, if you want to play a world class opponent.
YMMV
Rodrigo Andrade
slowly on my humble Pentium 200 MHz Analyzing long matches, say, 9 points or
longer, is a pain on the butt and they take almost one hour to conclude. Let
alone rollouts. Cubeless rollouts at 3-ply seem to freeze the computer :-)
Cubeful rollouts, if not rolled out at 1-ply, are endless.
Here's the interesting part: the other day I was watching top flight
backgammon on GamesGrid, and I was fortunate enough to catch the match on
the first game (that's a MAJOR fault on the GamesGrid client--if you catch a
match in the middle, and want to save it, you can't save the games you
missed). It was a match to 11. After the match was over, I saved it and
analyzed with Snowie, 3-ply, 100% speed, tiny search space. MAN, I couldn't
believe my eyes when I saw the progression bar increasing so fast!!! Snowie
took less than 10 minutes to analyze the whole match at the above settings!
So I guess that's a kind of a reward. If you're a good player, Snowie
analyzes the match quickly... *LOL* Well, there's a simple logic behind all
this: if you're a good player, you make more correct plays. If you make more
correct plays, Snowie doesn't need to waste time analyzing them.
But owning a Pentium II 500 MHz, which is coming out this year, is probably
faster *LOL*
RODRIGO
Wayne Crookes
of any game you play against it, including those that you play on GamesGrid
or Fibs and import into Snowie Professional.
A three-ply analysis on my Pentium II, 333 Mhz with 128Mb of RAM of a seven
point match generally takes 20 to 25 minutes.
I can go through it and see the rating (numerical co-efficient) which Snowie
gives to my play, the play which it considers best and most other plays, as
well as cube decisions.
The analysis rates my overall play as well as my partners - novice,
beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert or world class. I can see the
rating for cubes decisions - missed cubes, wrong cubes, wrong takes and
wrong passes as well as the rating for checker plays. It summarizes the
number of checker play errors, including blunders, and finally indicates
which player was luckiest.
You can go through each match, on a roll by roll basis or jump to cube
decision errors, checker error, checker blunders or all of them.
Playing with Jellyfish you will be able to see JF's evaluation of each play
as you play and can get Jellyfish to rollout positions (as you can in Snowie
too).
Jellyfish is a really good programme. Snowie Professional has gone two
steps further. I recommend both but recommend Snowie very strongly.
rtrbah wrote in message <3698A4F7...@batelco.com.bh>...
George Mueller
commitment I want to make to the game. You've convinced me to get snowie,
but can I get by with the "student" version for now, or do I need to spend
the extra money for a higher end version? Thanks in advance for your
answers. George