With the battle against the misuse of backgammon bots, we almost forgot that these programs were originally purposed to help us become better players. I thought about it after reading an interview with Martin Smith, GameAccount bots buster and the creator of ProBot, not the heavy metal side project of Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters lead-singer Dave Grohl, but the toughest challenger in the family of the games network’s robotic opponents which includes AmateurBot, RookieBot and Beginnerbot, on FT.com.

Backgammon Bots History Revisited

First, an old obligation. At the end of the first episode of the long and winding history of backgammon bots, after looking at the first experiments in backgammon computing, the winning BKG 9.8. and the commercially successful Expert Backgammon, I promised to leap forward to 1990 to review TD-Gammon, still the most revolutionary backgammon software in the history of the game and artificial intelligence.

TD-Gammon Backgammon Software

TD-Gammon was developed by Gerald Tesauro of IBM’s Watson Research Center in New York, as part of a reinforcement learning study. The TD stands for Temporal Difference learning, a prediction method mainly used for reinforcement learning, or in less scientific jargon, the computer taught itself to play backgammon and to play better and better. The eventual result was the first neural net to really take up the best human players. Moreover, TD-Gammon could have also improved the way its human opponents played backgammon.

Back to ProBot

Mr. Smith, whose doctoral thesis is based on Teasauro machine, had similar methodical aims when building his family of bots (which, by the way, can not only play backgammon but also blackjack, poker and other skill-luck combined games). That is why ProBot is not undefeatable; as in human vs. human backgammon games, a beginner can beat a pro with the right rolls.

What ProBot does is "it wins for a couple of weeks, then the humans figure out how to beat it and they win for a couple of weeks while Smith goes away and works on his software… Then he comes back with a new version of the program that wins for a couple of weeks, while the humans go away and think about it." While the bot’s younger, less skilled brothers are programmed to make stupid mistakes, just like humans do.

According to Smith, who holds a PhD in with Artificial Intelligence and a past in chess and poker hustling, these nonhuman players are the best opponents a human player can ask for; bots don’t bitch and whine as you win nor do they blow their horn when you lose, "they won’t be saying: ‘I’m just going to make a cup of tea,’ and not come back. There’s none of those annoying human frailties."

The Naumburg Bandshell area in Central Park, New York City was covered yesterday with authentic Mediterranean sand to disguise itself to Tel Aviv beach. To complete the costume, Israeli DJ, reggae and rock bands performed and the usual attributes of a beach in Tel Aviv covered the sand including tanning beds, sunshades, games of beach volleyball (matkot) and, of course, backgammon (shesh besh). The sun, however, was absent through most of the day.

The reason for this metamorphosis was Tel Aviv 100th anniversary and the first day of the summer. The cost of the one day project was estimated as $150,000 and it was sponsored by the Foreign Ministry, the Tourism Ministry, the Tel Aviv Municipality and El Al Airlines. Tel Aviv beach will be re-replicated in Vienna on July 19 and once again from July 25th to August 2nd in Copenhagen. You don’t have to bring your own backgammon boards.

Below, pictures from a real beach in Tel Aviv, taken at the first beach backgammon championship held last summer:

Ishai Shotten, Play65’s long time affiliate, won the wii game console in the first ever Affilicon backgammon tournament held last week during the affiliate marketing convention and exhibition in Airport City, Israel. To win the wii, Mr. Shotten bested 6 of the toughest rivals out of the 30 enthusiastic backgammon affiliates who attended the backgammon tournament; about half of them were qualified online while the others followed the smell of freshly baked brownies, the sound of rolling dice and the rumors about a free wii desperately seeking owners.

Mr. Shotten however, hardly ever play backgammon online, though he appreciates Play65 backgammon software ("I think that the software and gameplay are good") and affiliate program ("It’s decent, somewhere in the middle") he prefers playing backgammon live, with his friends; apparently, it takes an incentive such as a wii console to get the competitive backgammon devil out of him.

So backgammon made a brief yet notable appearance in Lost, thickening the plot by adding extra layers of cosmic meanings, but backgammon as a game is hardly a spectator’s sports. Though several attempts have been made to televise backgammon championships (from the forgotten experiment of The Crowns Cup to the World Series of Backgammon, now beginning its third season), but none have them succeed in giving backgammon the same push the broadcast of World Series of Poker gave poker, for example.

But comparing backgammon to poker in this sense is not fair as long as no backgammon equivalent to hole cards camera (which exposes the player’s hidden cards to the viewers at home) can be found.

So what can improve the viewers rating of backgammon? Speed backgammon games? Suspensive men vs. backgammon bots sessions? Nude backgammon with swimsuit models? All suggestions will be welcomed.

Are you the best backgammon player among the online backgammon affiliates or the other way around?

Do you plan to attend the upcoming Affilicon conference, scheduled to take place on June 1-2, 2009 at the Avenue Convention Center in Airport City, Israel?

On the second day of the affiliate marketing convention and exhibition, Play65 will be hosting the first ever Affiliate Backgammon Tournament, with a brand new wii console as the first prize.

Fromavlxyz flickr

To assure your place at the unique backgammon tournament, enter the qualifying Online Affilicon65 Backgammon Tournament on Play65 platform on Saturday, May 30^th at 19:00 (GMT) and insert the entrance code "Affiliate65".  

Note that you don’t have to be a Play65 partner to play the online or the live Affilicon65 Backgammon Tournament, yet you will be asked to download Play65 software and open a user account to play either event.

 And Play65 Affilicon tournament winner is…

Being one of the most ancient, popular games worldwide, backgammon commonly appears on Movies and TV series. Sometimes backgammon is only backgammon; it appears in the background as something people do casually, like eating, fishing or playing backgammon with swimsuit models. In other times, the game’s absorption capacity of crucial metaphors pushes it to the front. That is what happened in The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner and in Emotional Backgammon, where backgammon symbolizes the struggle between choice and destiny. And that is what happened in Lost.

The significance of the role of backgammon in Lost was clarified during the final, double episode of the 5th season, which amplified the echoes of the short backgammon discussion that occurred during the second part of the pilot.

Every sentence bears a deeper, wider meaning. If backgammon is the oldest game in the world, then it must be saying something about the antiquity of the island; the mentioning of the two sides, one light and the other one is dark, refers not only to the good vs. evil battle but to the two opposing sides reside in every human being. And what does the remark on the 5,000 old dice made of bone can tell us on the big game played on the island?

As Play65 continues its efforts to get rid of backgammon bots, it is a good opportunity to look back at the history of the computer programs that often play better than the best human backgammon players, for better and for worse.

The first backgammon bot that succeed in defeating a championship level player, and not just a player but the then World Backgammon Champion, Luigi Villa of Italy, was BKG 9.8. It was developed in the late 1970s by the computer science professor and World Correspondence Chess Champion Hans Berliner with the assistant of former World Backgammon Champion Paul Magriel.

The human vs. machine match took place in June 1979, right after Mr. Villa was crowned the new world champion in Monte Carlo. They played 5 games and the final score was 7-1. Prof. Berliner earned the $5000 prize on behalf of the bot, but later justified the program’s victory with the lucky appearances of better rolls than those rolled by the opponent, who all – including Berliner - agreed played far better than the machine.

The next step in backgammon bots history was taken at the end of the following decade with the publication of the first commercial bot, Expert Backgammon. Although our robotic backgammon expert skill level fell from this of a human backgammon expert, the latter benefited from the former greatest novelty – the ability to perform rollouts (analyze positions by playing them out many times) persistently.

Thus, Expert Backgammon made a greater impact on the game then BKG 9.8, allowing players in analyzing different positions and finding out the best possible play in any given position, and making backgammon a more statistically proven game, what has been theoretical when rollouts where performed manually by human beings. Backgammon computer revolution was completed with TD-Gammon, the first neural net backgammon program that equaled a champion level player. And this story worth a whole different post. Soon.

Probably not, neither can it cure AIDS, Nevertheless, backgammon can, in some roundabout way, promote co-existence between Arab and Jewish children in Israel and treat African HIV carriers.

One to One Children’s Fund had hosted its 9th annual Omar Sharif One to One backgammon and poker charity tournament on the 10th of May in Sketch Restaurant, London in the company of many local celebrities including Take That’s Mark Owen, Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray, Guy Ritchie’s favorite actor Jason Flemyng (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) and others. Each participant paid £365 entry fees (the cost of £1 donation a day), while non playing spectators paid only £100 for the company and the champagne and gourmet finger foods.

At the end of the day, the backgammon/poker tournament raised £100,000, which will be split between the Middle East projects, designed to bring closer children of three religions in Israel, and the Africa projects, that provide medical treatment to kids with HIV or AIDS.

Play65 intends to clear out its online backgammon environment from the unjust presence of backgammon bots (snowie, gnubg and others). Please welcome the bots busters:

Feel like you’ve been cheated by a fellow? Do you suspect the human play of your opponent or you think a certain win can only be achieved by a machine? Then stop torturing yourself and call the bots busters.

Robert Wachtel, Masayuki "Mochy" Mochizuki and Michael "Falafel" Natanzon, three of the world’s top backgammon champions (numbers 9, 6 and 1 in the Giants of Backgammon list), who can descry a backgammon bot from an exceptionally good player, will serve as the judges in every complaint and suspicion of bot abuse. If the verdict is guilty, the penalty will be an immediate account suspension and a drawback to the cheated players’ accounts.

Use of backgammon bots, computer programs that offer games’ analysis as well as world class player’s advice on the correct play at any given position, is one of the most common and annoying cheats in online backgammon. The cheaters take advantage of the anonymity created by the online sphere and let the expert bots play instead of them, and often win their innocent opponents money that way.

Fortunately, most of these bots abuser can be traced with the help of Play65 backgammon bot busters, who plan to make the world of Play65 a safer place for fair players, by booting out the wrongdoer, taking the money from the bad guys and return it to the good ones.