[Bug-gnubg] An exact bearoff analyser!

[Øystein Schønning-Johansen]

An exact bearoff analysing tool.

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- Have you ever lost a position that was "impossible" to lose?

- Do you always feel unlucky in the bearoff?

- Have you ever told your hard luck story: "It was a No. 3. loss!" ?

- Ever thought: "That must have been a million to one chance of losing." ?

I have the right tool for you! The exact bearoff analyser! And when I say

exact, I mean exact! It's exact in the way that it will report a rational

number of the winning probability for the player on roll. It is still a

one sided bearoff database, so it is not exact in the way that it play

moves according the opponents positions.

Download: http://www.gnubg.org/media/sources/exact-bearoff.zip

Compiling

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exact-bearoff.c is written in pretty standard C, so I don't believe there will be much

problems compiling it with any C compiler. If you have any problems please contact me.

You need the GNU Multi-precision library (aka GMP) to compile and link. If you have

GMP and GCC you can try compiling like this:

> gcc -Wall -Wextra -O3 -I. -c exact-bearoff.c

> gcc -o exact-bearoff exact-bearoff.o -lgmp

Usage

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The exact bearoff analyser is a pure command line tool. Just type:

> exact-bearoff <board for player onroll>-<board for opponent>

You need the file 'exact.ddb' in the current working directory.

Examples:

> exact-bearoff 4-2

Winnning probability: 1/6

meaning that the position where the player on roll has 4 checkers on his ace point,

and the opponent has 2 checkers, the chance of winning is (of course) 1/6.

If you have this position:

 GNU Backgammon  Position ID: 3z0NAABfZw8AAA

                 Match ID   : cAngAAAAAAAA

 +13-14-15-16-17-18------19-20-21-22-23-24-+     O: gnubg

 |                  |   | O  O     O  O  O |     0 points

 |                  |   | O        O  O  O |

 |                  |   |          O  O  O |

 |                  |   |          O     O |

 |                  |   |                O |

v|                  |BAR|                  |     7 point match (Cube: 1)

 |                  |   |                X |

 |                  |   | X              X |

 |                  |   | X        X     X |

 |                  |   | X  X     X     X |     On roll

 |                  |   | X  X     X  X  X |     0 points

 +12-11-10--9--8--7-------6--5--4--3--2--1-+     X: oystein

This is a bit harder to calculate:

> exact-bearoff 513024-534012

Winning probability: 27253945372010549856722445713456890823/63936311986958875890717097301737734144

You can specify more than 9 checker on a point with the letters a-f. (Lowercase).

License

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BSD style license. Please give me feedback if you find this tool useful

or want to use it any way. I would also like feedback if you think this tool

is totally useless!

Good luck,

-Øystein

"The Exact Bearoff Analyser -- Quantifying hard luck stories since 2012!"