Deleted Jellyfish
Fragino L. Arola
While I do not consider myself an AUTHORITY on backgammon, I do know enough
to finally have had enough with this program.
I put up with some really strange and off the wall wins. Sometimes only
occuring after hitting some really very hard combinations. Now, I now that
it does happen in real life, but on a consistent basis!?
I got really curious after somebody had mentioned on this newsgroup on how
jellyfish behaves after doubling or being doubled, because I noticed the
same thing. Over a three day period I played probably over a hundred games
on the hardest level and doubling every single time. JF3 won every single
one of them.
Enough said.
Fredrik Dahl
I guess I'm repeating myself, but you can PROVE to yourself that it
doesn't cheat with the dice. The two numbers SEED and COUNTER (settings
menu) defines the state of the dice generator. If you like, you can
write down these number before starting the game. Before starting the
next game, do 'Swap sides' and reset SEED and COUNTER. You will then see
that you get the same sequence of rolls with you getting JFs dice and
vice versa. Swapping sides is done to make the other player win the
opening roll, otherwise you'll get the same sequence exactly. It does
not take a lot of work to see that the dice rolls are independant of who
is rolling, what the score is, what the position looks like etc.
When you start the program, it uses the system time of you pc to set the
seed, while the counter is zero.
--
- Fredrik Dahl
Tony Schleizer
Fragino L. Arola wrote:
>
> While I do not consider myself an AUTHORITY on backgammon, I do know enough
> to finally have had enough with this program.
>
> I put up with some really strange and off the wall wins. Sometimes only
> occuring after hitting some really very hard combinations. Now, I now that
> it does happen in real life, but on a consistent basis!?
>
> I got really curious after somebody had mentioned on this newsgroup on how
> jellyfish behaves after doubling or being doubled, because I noticed the
> same thing. Over a three day period I played probably over a hundred games
> on the hardest level and doubling every single time. JF3 won every single
> one of them.
>
> Enough said.
i was having the same problem. so, i decided to enter the dice
rolls manually. lo and behold, jellyfish kept getting great rolls
even with me rolling the dice! i have no idea how
fredrik worked that piece of magic into the code.
after getting annihilated 10 games in a row on level 2, i decided to
re-read a
couple backgammon books that i have and try to figure out what
i was doing wrong. now i am back to the point where i have about
a 50% score against level 4, even with it rolling the dice.
after reading those books it sure looked like i was getting lucky
a lot more. :)
tony
Fragino L. Arola
I really wanted to believe. I really did. I so wanted to find a really
good bg program and was willing to pay money for it. It just wasn't the
doubles, but the consistent way it hit combinations that it needed,
especially if it was coming off the bar, it had only one opening and I had
a single open on the 6 to 10 points. Yes it does happen, but it would do
it again and again and again, not just on different games but on the same
game. Sorry, I played it for 3 weeks and I really tried to convince myself
that it wasn't the program.
Graham Trevor Price
In <01bc7235$4b887b00$e1aeaec7@default> "Fragino L. Arola"
<far...@sprynet.com> writes:
>
>While I do not consider myself an AUTHORITY on backgammon, Over a
three day period I played probably over a hundred games
>on the hardest level and doubling every single time. JF3 won every
single
>one of them.
>
>Enough said.
strength. Maybe it is not too objective.
I find Jellyfish to be an excellent product and it forced me to
reassess my evaluations and style because of its solid and
generally sound strategy. Of course it hurts when it doubles
and rolls a market loser to blow you away, but that was part of
the reason for the double.
I certainly felt it was worth the $30 us (somewhere in transit between
here and Norway). To have an opponent of this strength ready to play
at any time is really a dream come true.
Even with the shareware you can replay your match using manual dice
by reading (and/or renaming the match.mat file) and go through move
by move swapping sides to see what action jellyfish would take, what
play it would make etc.. a great study aid.
You can only improve through critical analysis of your play and
cube strategies although lucky dice can make anyone a god for a day or
week.....they tend to run out especially against strong players.
Anyway thanks Fredrik for a great program, it's up to the users to
make use of the resources, unfortunately it's often easier to be
critical and blame abstract forces for one's own shortcomings.
Graham.
Daniel Murphy
On 6 Jun 1997 21:59:27 GMT, "Fragino L. Arola" <far...@sprynet.com>
wrote:
Incredible. Incredible, that Fragino Arola posted that paragraph as a
*followup* to Fredrik Dahl's post which proved that Fragino is flat
out wrong! Once more, here's what Fredrik said:
>I guess I'm repeating myself, but you can PROVE to yourself that it
>doesn't cheat with the dice. The two numbers SEED and COUNTER (settings
>menu) defines the state of the dice generator. If you like, you can
>write down these numbers before starting the game. Before starting the
>next game, do 'Swap sides' and reset SEED and COUNTER. You will then see
>that you get the same sequence of rolls with you getting JFs dice and
>vice versa. Swapping sides is done to make the other player win the
>opening roll, otherwise you'll get the same sequence exactly. It does
>not take a lot of work to see that the dice rolls are independant of who
>is rolling, what the score is, what the position looks like etc.
Which part of this is so hard to understand?
Daniel Murphy rac...@cityraccoon.com San Francisco, CA
____________________________________________________________________
Backgammon on-line: telnet fibs.com 4321; Backgammon in
San Francisco, annotated games and more: http://www.backgammon.org/bgbg/
Steve Fiete
No one should have to put up with the indignity of losing to a program that
cheats. Obviously, not everyone believes you, and thinks that you are just
losing fair games. Let me suggest something that will help your
credibility. Show up to some major backgammon tournaments with lots of cash
in hand. You might lose a few, but you are bound to win one before long.
After winning in a major tournament you can speak about the game, and
backgammon programs with more authority.
Fragino L. Arola <far...@sprynet.com> wrote in article
<01bc7235$4b887b00$e1aeaec7@default>...
> While I do not consider myself an AUTHORITY on backgammon, I do know
enough
> to finally have had enough with this program.
>
> I put up with some really strange and off the wall wins. Sometimes only
> occuring after hitting some really very hard combinations. Now, I now
that
> it does happen in real life, but on a consistent basis!?
<<snip>>
Chuck Bower
In article <01bc72c4$f7560ee0$ccdfafce@default>,
Fragino L. Arola <far...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>I really wanted to believe. I really did. I so wanted to find a really
>good bg program and was willing to pay money for it. It just wasn't the
>doubles, but the consistent way it hit combinations that it needed,
>especially if it was coming off the bar, it had only one opening and I had
>a single open on the 6 to 10 points. Yes it does happen, but it would do
>it again and again and again, not just on different games but on the same
>game. Sorry, I played it for 3 weeks and I really tried to convince myself
>that it wasn't the program.
>
Fragino,
I have a sound piece of advice for you and all who have similar
convictions. If you want to play championship level backgammon, get
rid of this "the only reason I lose is bad dice" attitude. No excuses.
You're wasting your mental energies chasing windmills. Period.
Chuck
bo...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu
c_ray on FIBS
Peter Nickless
Hey, "perception is reality". Leave the guy alone. :) He's entitled to his
opinion.
Daniel Murphy <rac...@cityraccoon.com> wrote:
: ... which proved that Fragino is flat
: out wrong!
: Which part of this is so hard to understand?
Fragino L. Arola
Steve:
The only credibility that I want to claim is that I love to play the game
and that I want to find a good bg program (I'd like to think that I'm not
the only one.) I'm willing to say that I could be wrong and that I may
just not be good enough for the program. But after three weeks of
testing, it may not be the program for me, at any hardness level. I never
claimed any high authority. Just a basic knowledge of the game, the desire
to play and willingness to keep testing the program for three weeks before
making a decision.
What I really do appreciate though is that while we do disagree, we are
willing to say so in a reasoned manner.
Good Newsgroup.
Steve Fiete <sfi...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article
<01bc7350$71b20000$4aa6...@steve.ix.netcom.com>...
Stephen Hubbard
"Fragino L. Arola" <far...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>Steve:
>Good Newsgroup.
I have another suggestion for you. Make the small investment in the
jellyfish program. I suggest the tutor version because it will tell
you the best moves and also you can learn how to use the doubling
cube(most important at higher level play).
There are plenty of not so good programs that you could buy and you
could probably beat them consistently, but that won't improve your
game.
If you want to improve your game you have to be willing to give up
your theory of crooked dice. As long as you think the dice are crooked
you will always have a justification for losing.
Then all you have to do is start noticing how the winners win, whether
it be jellyfish or an expert human. The advantage of playing jellyfish
is profound though. I don't know too many human experts who will let
you pick their brains for less than about $100 per hour.
Bas Pluim
Two boys, John and Jeff, went swimming, and they decided to race
eachother. They jumped into the water, and, boys being boys, took
off like madmen.
Jeff won, and John came up spluttering: "That's not fair! You swim
faster than I do!".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Bas Pluim Disclaimer: These are my views, ~
~ basp...@vnet.ibm.com not neccesarily IBM's. ~
~ ~
~ Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Mellen
I have a couple comments on the new JF interface. I post them here so
that others who agree or disagree can react.
1. The new feature which enables automatic dice rolling is wonderful, but
one unfortunate side effect is that you have to turn it off in order to
use the 'finish game' feature, because you can only use 'finish game'
before you roll. It would be better if the 'finish game' feature could be
used after the roll as well, to avoid this inconvenience.
2. Now that I have automatic rolling, I find myself accidentally clicking
the right-hand area to roll the dice even in situations where I do not
have to roll them. This, of course, results in the 'illegal move' dialog
box where you must click 'ok' to continue. While this is my own bad
habit, I noticed that even with JF 2.0 I would occasionally click in this
area by accident with the same result. It would be better if a click in
the right-hand area after the dice have already been rolled did not result
in an 'illegal move' message but simply had no effect at all.
3. The setting which enables automatic dice rolling in situations where
the player does not have access to the cube could be made even more
helpful by making the dice roll automatically when the cube is dead as
well. (E.g., at 2-away, 2-away, if JF doubles you after the opening roll,
automatic dice rolling should occur.)
4. The addition of comments such as "double/take" to the cube evaluation
window is quite nice. I assume that JF's evaluation of cube decisions is
based upon a "doubling window" type of analysis. I suspect many players
would find it handy to have the cube evaluation also indicate the doubling
window at the given match score.
David Montgomery
In article <solon-14069...@ts002d22.det-mi.concentric.net> so...@concentric.net (Steve Mellen) writes:
>1. The new feature which enables automatic dice rolling is wonderful, but
>one unfortunate side effect is that you have to turn it off in order to
>use the 'finish game' feature, because you can only use 'finish game'
>before you roll. It would be better if the 'finish game' feature could be
>used after the roll as well, to avoid this inconvenience.
I agree completely and mentioned this kind of thing to Fredrik a while
back. He agreed it was inconvenient to have to toggle off the auto-rolling
in order to be able to have JF finish game. I hope that next version (or
an earlier patch) will add this feature.
[...]
>3. The setting which enables automatic dice rolling in situations where
>the player does not have access to the cube could be made even more
>helpful by making the dice roll automatically when the cube is dead as
>well. (E.g., at 2-away, 2-away, if JF doubles you after the opening roll,
>automatic dice rolling should occur.)
Again, I agree.
Another improvement I would like is to be able enter a negative number
in the "roll automatically if the equity is less than this" box.
Embarassing as it is, I sometimes offer beaverable doubles. To use
JF as a learning tool, I don't want to have JF prevent me from doubling
when I have an equity of 0.00 or 0.20 or even -0.15. I'd like to set
the "of course I would never make such a stupid double" threshold at
-0.25 or lower, which would still allow me to make all the mistakes
to which I'm entitled, but would make it so I didn't have to roll vs
a closed board.
>4. The addition of comments such as "double/take" to the cube evaluation
>window is quite nice. I assume that JF's evaluation of cube decisions is
>based upon a "doubling window" type of analysis. I suspect many players
>would find it handy to have the cube evaluation also indicate the doubling
>window at the given match score.
I don't think JF does things as simply as you are thinking. In some
manner or another it incorporates the volatility, which complicates
the window. Different gammon rates also complicate what the cubeless
window would be. So I doubt that this feature is feasible.
David Montgomery
monty on FIBS
mo...@cs.umd.edu
S225b
How do i set up backgammon? I have the game but I forgot how to set it
up Can you help me?
Tom Keith
S225b wrote:
>
> How do i set up backgammon? I have the game but I forgot how to set it
> up Can you help me?
You can find the rules of backgammon at:
http://www.bkgm.com/rules.html
Tom