JD, you have the source code of gnubg so you can check for yourself
the code does not cheat,
You can of course compile it yourself to be sure that the precompiled
binaries provided do not use tweaked code.
Big waste of time in my opinion, as in the end you'll probably still
lose a lot against gnubg and you'll still have the impression he's
cheating.
But that is of course not the case: the sooner you realise it, the
sooner you'll start focusing on improving your game.
Another thing you can do is to try other BG software (e.g.
XtremeGammon). But once again the end result will not change:
XG is at least as strong as gnubg (actually a bit stronger), hence ...
Max.
On 17 August 2013 06:11, JD <address@hidden
<mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
On 08/16/2013 09:59 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
JD <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>> writes:
While you can do a statistical study of the randomness of
dice rolls, it
does not take into account that the engine can see current
board, and
determine that it (the gnubg pseudo-player, which is also
me - since I
selected human against human, and player 0's default name
is gnubg). I
find it very strange that in 4 out of 5 games, where I was
playing both
as player 0 and player 1, with player 0 being gnubg, the
rolls for gnubg
were incredibly winner rolls - totally amazing to me.
So, I was not playing against the bot, as you say. I was
playing human
against human, and I did not enable the "Dice
Manupulation" option at
all.
But I can tell you in all honesty that I was doing my best
for each roll
of the dice for both players (0, and 1).
The problem, in a nutshell, is that your sample size is much
too small.
Humans (all humans) have a very bad intuition for randomness.
We expect
it to be more uniform than it actually is, when in reality
it's quite
clumpy and prone to long patterns of behavior that we think of
as not
random. This is why, for example, many slot machine players will
absolutely swear that there is such a thing as hot and cold
machines, or
that a machine is "ready" to pay out, when under the hood the slot
machines have government-certified mathematical random number
generators
that don't care in the slightest about whether they've paid
off recently
or not.
We're very, very good at finding patterns. It's what our
brains are
adapted to do. We therefore find patterns even when they
don't exist,
possibly since (evolutionarily) it's a survival characteristic
to err on
the side of seeing patterns (e.g., predators) where they don't
exist
instead of erring on the side of missing patterns that do exist.
In any event, five games is far, far too few to tell you
anything of
substance (as you alluded to in your earlier message). You'd
need to do a
more systematic and recorded study across more like 100 games,
with some
sort of objective criteria, to be sure that the pattern is
statistically
significant.
Yes, correct.
All I am saying is that TO ME, it is sufficiently significant, because
I will certainly NOT be playing millions or billions of games and note
the rolls for each given board state.
Up to now (as of typing this message), I have played about 10 games,
and out pf 10 games, of 7 points each, I won only one game, even then,
marginally. I lost 9 games, and each one with a huge disadvantage in
the number of my pieces remaining on the board.
Certainly, I did not set out to lose to myself.
I would have hoped that the engine would not suddenly roll dice that
would provide doubles to player 0 in the most amazingly opportune
time,
to to roll dice that would hit my piece exactly when it became
uncovered.
NO such dice would roll for player 1. NONE!!!!
In 10 games, each game with 5 or 7 points.
I am sorry, this may not be statistically significant to
mathematicians.
It is extremely significant to me, as I do not have the time to put in
100,000,000 games.
Best regards,
JD
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