RE: Snowie and GNUBG

[Ian Shaw]

I think XG has gained in popularity over gnubg mainly because it is faster, and only marginally  because of the slight playing strength advantage.

 

And Xavier has done a great publicity job.

 

Xavier had the advantage of being able to design for speed and multi-threading from  the outset. Gnubg’s multi-threading has been patched in afterwards, where it would make the biggest effect.

 

For, example, if I recall correctly, someone once did an analysis that showed gnubg spent a lot of time decoding and encoding  the position id. The id is wonderfully compact, but saving a bit of memory probably no longer has the priority it once did.

 

Ian

 

From: Bug-gnubg [mailto:bug-gnubg-bounces+ian.shaw=riverauto.co.uk@gnu.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Heled
Sent: 02 December 2020 02:31
To: Timothy Chow <tchow@alum.mit.edu>
Cc: bug-gnubg@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Snowie and GNUBG

 

https://katgammon.com/blog-post/which-backgammon-program-is-strongest/

 

On Wed, 2 Dec 2020 at 14:12, Joseph Heled <jheled@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you, Timothy!

 

So not enough data to know one way or the other, then.

 

-Joseph

 

On Sun, 29 Nov 2020 at 07:48, Timothy Y. Chow <tchow@math.princeton.edu> wrote:

Joseph Heled wrote:

> My recollection is that GNUBG was much stronger than Snowie even 15
> years ago. And 2020 GNUBG is stronger than 2005 GNUBG.
>
> Am I missing something?

According to Frank Berger, Torsten Schoop conducted a "Big Bot Shootout"
back in 2006.

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=7784

GNU came out slightly ahead but arguably not enough to be statistically
significant.

Backgammon Galore records some earlier results, also inconclusive.

https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+1040
https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+1086

Michael Depreli also did a bot comparison back in 2012, but this wasn't a
head-to-head duel; rather, it was an error-rate comparison.  I am not sure
which version of GNU was used.

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=114355

Tim