motif
mac
I once read this newsgroup in search of an on-line backgammon game to
play...and read someone's posting about a rigged game that always seemed
to roll the right roll, defying all odds, the game being the "motif"
listing....and of course assuming that the posting person was not as
good as I, I accepted the challenge and went there to play....he was
right it is rigged BIG TIME.......am through with it...
Tom Keith
mac wrote:
> [Motif] is rigged BIG TIME.......am through with it...
Motif is Java Applet which plays backgammon. If you have web
browswer that runs Java (such as Netscape or Internet Explorer),
you can play by going to
http://www.io.org/~takeith/motif/
I am quite sure Motif is not rigged in any way. (I wrote it.)
It is lots of fun, though. And popular -- it averages more than
1000 games a day.
Tom
Robert D. Johnson
mac wrote:
>
> I once read this newsgroup in search of an on-line backgammon game to
> play...and read someone's posting about a rigged game that always seemed
> to roll the right roll, defying all odds, the game being the "motif"
> listing....and of course assuming that the posting person was not as
> good as I, I accepted the challenge and went there to play....he was
No. I truly doubt that Tom Keith, the programmer of
http://www.io.org/~takeith/motif/
has any motivation to have Motif cheat. I have not
ever noticed anything out of the ordinary. The disasterous
and opportunistic rolls seem to occur at random for both
players. It just plays some parts of the game very well,
arranging its checkers to take best advantage of future rolls.
To win big (maximize winnings per game) against Motif, my strategy
is to get into a strong backgame and carefully let the cube go back
and forth. If you can win 2/3 of the games that way, with the cube
at 32, then that would be an average of +10 points per game. I don't
do quite that well, so I have merely +3 per game. But, that has put
me at #1 in the Motif ratings! I am confident people will surpass
that, perhaps exceeding +10 per game (average). Just remember to
be careful on your final redouble.
Warning. I hinted to Tom about Motif's weaknesses. Not sure when
or if he will plug them.
--
Robert D. Johnson (rjohnson) rjoh...@cvbnet.cv.com
http://www.cv.com/
bj...@lehigh.edu
In article <325D87...@texas.net>, mac <ra...@texas.net> writes:
>I once read this newsgroup in search of an on-line backgammon game to
>play...and read someone's posting about a rigged game that always seemed
>to roll the right roll, defying all odds, the game being the "motif"
>listing....and of course assuming that the posting person was not as
>good as I, I accepted the challenge and went there to play....he was
>right it is rigged BIG TIME.......am through with it...
>
The untrue rigging of FIBS has had witch-hunters trying to reason every single
pagan possibility as to why a computer program hates you too much.
marvin offered $250 to anyone who could prove that FIBS is fixed. Apparently,
all the ignoramuses with IQ's several deviations to the left of the bell curve
have spent too much time posting crap like this, and not trying to actually
take a look at how equitable FIBS really is.
These posting are wastes of all our time. It is about time that shit like this
should stop being written. We are all getting too sick of it.
If someone wanted to do damage by writing a computer program, I'm sure they
could get more kicks out of doing real hacking than writing a program that
miffs a bunch of backgammon players.
Brad Mampe
bj...@lehigh.edu
P.S. My rating dropped 25 points today. Let me know the headquarters of your
nearest underground witch-hunting club so I can damn a random number generator
until I die.
Tom Keith
Robert D. Johnson wrote:
> To win big (maximize winnings per game) against Motif, my strategy
> is to get into a strong backgame and carefully let the cube go back
> and forth. If you can win 2/3 of the games that way, with the cube
> at 32, then that would be an average of +10 points per game. I don't
> do quite that well, so I have merely +3 per game. But, that has put
> me at #1 in the Motif ratings! I am confident people will surpass
> that, perhaps exceeding +10 per game (average). Just remember to
> be careful on your final redouble.
Great. :( -- You've let the cat out of the bag now!
> Warning. I hinted to Tom about Motif's weaknesses. Not sure when
> or if he will plug them.
A new version is on the way. The new evaluator was developed by
analyzing the games with Motif's top opponents (like rjohnson and bibi).
It'll probably be installed over Christmas, so anyone who wants to try
rjohnson's strategy still has a couple months with the present version.
Tom
Robert D. Johnson
> > To win big (maximize winnings per game) against Motif, my strategy
> > is to get into a strong backgame and carefully let the cube go back
> be careful on your final redouble.
DISCLAIMER:
I must remind all that playing in this perverse fashion is not easy,
and you can drive your rating down to China (or up to Canada, for .au
people) very quickly. I recently hit +4.0 pts/game but plummeted down
to +2.5 pts/game. I am not positive anymore if my approach is valid,
or if I just got some lucky breaks. It can be difficult to gauge
Motif's ideas on redoubles/takes/drops. When you get gammoned on
a 64 cube, you will be considerably steamed by my posting. Not
recommended for people with heart problems or with fragile
computer equipment.
Robert-Jan Veldhuizen
If I read this post and similar ones, it looks more like the people
who doubt FIBS' random generator (quite reasonable if you don't know
how it works and we don't, right ?) are the witches here...
What test have *you* taken that you're so sure the dice are fair ???
Zorba
a...@aztec.co.za
In <54bq0t$c...@news.xs4all.nl>, veld...@xs4all.nl (Robert-Jan Veldhuizen) writes:
>
>If I read this post and similar ones, it looks more like the people
>who doubt FIBS' random generator (quite reasonable if you don't know
>how it works and we don't, right ?) are the witches here...
>
>What test have *you* taken that you're so sure the dice are fair ???
>
>Zorba
Surely to be "unfair"the dice would not only have to be not perfectly random,
but to actually FAVOUR one of the players. Not perfectly random dice would
be equally onerous\advantageous to both players and the only issue that would
change in that case would be exact probability calculations and equities
(again equally for both players) and those only partially to the degree by
which the nonrandomness manifested itself?
Robert-Jan Veldhuizen
I would call dice which are skewed unfair, no matter if a player gets
favoured by then or not.
And skewed dice *could* have a huge impact on the strategy you should
play... If one player knows something about the dice which the other
doesn't, s/he could favour himself with that.
So it's not true what you're saying here.
Zorba