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1980's BG program for the Apple ][

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 5 August 2010, at 1:41 a.m.

In Response To: 1980's BG program for the Apple ][ (Timothy Chow)

Thanks to Mark Calderbank on rec.games.backgammon for identifying the program I was thinking of as FASTGAMMON. There's a simulator for it at www.virtualapple.org so you can try it out if you like. Say you roll an opening 64 and want to play 24/14; you type

24-18 [enter]
18-14 [enter]

Use B for bar and H for bearing off (e.g., 3-H for 3/off). There's no cube but it does know about gammons and backgammons (however, it does not keep a running total of your score).

Although I was delighted to be able to play FASTGAMMON again after all these years, I can see now that it is not very strong (though in the one game I played it didn't seem ridiculously bad). I am still curious as to who wrote the program and what algorithm it uses.

Messages In This Thread

• 1980's BG program for the Apple ][
  Timothy Chow -- Monday, 19 July 2010, at 2:15 p.m.
  • 1980's BG program for the Apple ][
    Rich Munitz -- Tuesday, 20 July 2010, at 4:16 a.m.
    • 1980's BG program for the Apple ][
      Timothy Chow -- Tuesday, 20 July 2010, at 11:10 p.m.
    • command line interface
      svilo -- Thursday, 5 August 2010, at 3:51 p.m.
      • command line interface
        Jason Lee -- Thursday, 5 August 2010, at 10:28 p.m.
      • command line interface
        storm -- Friday, 6 August 2010, at 5:38 a.m.
  • 1980's BG program for the Apple ][
    Timothy Chow -- Thursday, 5 August 2010, at 1:41 a.m.