Backgammon Articles

Computer Dice Programming

 

	Computer Dice
	Computer Dice The most common and persistent theme of postings to rec.games.backgammon has to do with whether various backgammon programs cheat with their dice. Here is a small selection of those posts. (As far as I know, the dice in all major backgammon programs and on all backgammon play sites are random and fair.)
	How Dice Rolls are Generated at GammonSite How the dice are generated. Why people see patterns in dice rolls. Common misconceptions about dice rolls in backgammon.
	GamesGrid FAQ: Random Number Generator By GamesGrid. What random number generator does GamesGrid use? How are the dice rolls generated?
	Programming Backgammon
	Temporal Difference Learning and TD-Gammon By Gerald Tesauro. TD-Gammon was the first computer program to achieve a level of play close to the best human players. The brains of the program is a neural network that was able to learn to play well by playing many times against itself and learning from the results. This article was originally published in Communications of the ACM, March 1995.
	Practical Issues in Temporal Difference Learning (PDF) By Gerald Tesauro. This paper is a predecessor to Tesauro's TD-Gammon article above. It examines whether Sutton's TD(lambda) algorithm can be used to train a neural network to play backgammon. Tesauro found that with zero built-in knowledge a TD(lambda) trained network is able to learn to play the entire game of backgammon at a fairly strong intermediate level. This article was originally published in Machine Learning journal.
	Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction By Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto. The online version of a book published in 1998 by MIT Press. It covers learning techniques which can be applied to backgammon programs. One section describes Tesauro's TD-Gammon program.
	The Neural Net Backgammon Programs By Jay Scott. A survey of many of the top backgammon programs and how they work. Part of the web site Machine Learning in Games.
	Motif Backgammon Player Engine By Tom Keith. Motif is a Java Applet that plays backgammon. Here are some notes on how Motif works and how it learned to play.
	The Making of Bob's Backgammon By Bob Landwehr. An overview the genetic algorithms used in Bob's Backgammon, and how they evolved through natural selection to improve over many generations in competition with other algorithms.
	Programming Backgammon Ideas on programming backgammon that have been posted to the rec.games.backgammon newsgroup.

Copyright © 1996-2006 by Tom Keith