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.

To Play65 Members:

Got something to say on the backgammon room and you want the whole world (or at least all of Play65 online backgammon community) to hear about it? Want to win an extra Play65 bonus but your skills in backgammon don’t come near to your talent for writing?

To enter the contest, you should write and publish your well phrased review in your personal website, blog or any other public internet forum, and send us the link to the following address: contest@play65.com.

The reviews that meet with Play65 review contest rules (in short: the theme must be Play65 backgammon platform; the title must include the terms Play65 and/or Backgammon in any possible variation and links to Play65 website under relevant anchor texts must be embedded in the review), will be promoted here, on Play65 blog, and the review that will get the largest number of thumbs up will reward its writer with the desired bonus.

Note that if you feel more comfortable writing in a non-English language (providing it is included in Play65 21 available languages), it should not stop you from taking part in the contest; yet, it is advisable to contact us so we will provide you with alternative terms.