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"Hero Bots" bad for backgammon :(

Posted By: Jack Mack
Date: Monday, 20 February 2017, at 4:59 a.m.

In Response To: "Hero Bots" bad for backgammon :( (Phil Simborg)

I'm glad you found my comments interesting and thought provoking. I hope there will be follow up discussions on the details that you have brought up in response.

The "bot style" play is not as scientific as you are trying to make. After the initial training of the bots by playing billions of cubeless games making random moves, it becomes increasingly "bad science", especially cubeful rollouts and error calculations.

There have been valid arguments made that rollouts and especially early cubeful rollouts are biased and inaccurate of an unknown magnitude, and thus quite possibly useless and meaningless. Yet, the bg community just ignores the problem in a complete denial.

Similarly, valid arguments have been made that error rate calculations can't go beyond being arbitrary approximations which become completely meaningless when mentioned along with concepts like "strategy", "game plan", etc. Yet, the bg community just ignores the problem in a complete denial.

I'm not sure if it has been sufficiently demonstrated but even if I accept that there is some correlation between the low ER players and their live play records, it doesn't prove that the "bot style" play (in effect a certain "single-track strategy") is the best way, because you are only measuring apples with apples, in a planet of apples. Obviously, people who have never seen an orange will never be able to question the validity of measuring something with itself.

I can't imagine that there aren't any people in the bg community who can understand this, yet they also somehow must be able to ignore it and live in the comfort of denial.

Oh, about "presenting the game in a more fun and sexy way", googleing "strip backgammon" returned 4,280 hits vs "strip poker" returned 489,000 hits... :( Maybe we need a "strip bot" named XXXG and switch to XR rating... ;)

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