which are the players in the top 20 who don't play with help of any robot ?

which are those who are playing with this / these helps ? !

I don't know of anybody who plays Dvonn with robot help.

I'll 'fess up to occasionally (maybe 5-10 games total, and only against a few top players) asking RoRoRo to evaluate the board for me when I think I've got a losing position, to let me know if he thinks I've got a possible win or not. If he contradicts my presumtions and says I've got a win, then I'll look much harder at the situation. I can't say I remember doing that in the last few months though; either I'm losing so early on that RoRoRo will be of no assistance at all, or if I make it confidently towards an endgame, by the time I realise I'm not doing so well I can actually see his winning line.

I treat it as the equivalent of looking for a relaxed grin on the face of the opponent on an OtB game. If you think you've lost, and your (better) opponent thinks you've lost, then there's little point in expending too much effort, as the end result most likely won't change (though better opponents do mess up occasionally…).

I'd be surprised if any one of the top rated players (or first league championship players) is using computer. There are, I think, only a few players (and a couple of bots, but that's beside the point) who play considerably higher level dvonn than I do. I'm a guy of moderate intelligence and only half serious approach to the game. I don't use help. I'd be disappointed if there weren't at least half dozen players that can consistently beat me without any kind of external help.

Therefore, a valid question is, aldino, why did you ask this?

Thank you for your reply FatPhil & Paavo. A pity that only few players are reading LG forums. (So few I do). But I would like to get some other replies … When you have a rather good level in a game, if not the higher one, you can see when you are playing against a human or against “a helped” human. I know two or three players who were using such helps and were in the top 10 rated players some years ago, but who disappeared after when they played “alone”. (They can do their experiments : this is not the problem). But the VALID QUESTION REMAINS : Which are the players in the top 20 who don't play with help of any robot ?

@phil: I am kind of appalled by that! I have certainly spent about 2 hours, on several occasions in the past, proving by hand that I have lost a game by analysing all my moves and checking they don't work, in a dots and boxes position which a computer could analyse in about 5 minutes (21 lines played). It's the only way to do it and remain honest.

[clarification: I'm not talking about Dvonn]

My answer is that I hope none of the top players are using a computer program. In any case, that is what I am hoping for. However, if someone does use a computer program, then I will just have to play better. I am playing here for fun, typically never spending more than a couple of seconds making my moves. If someone is having fun to cheat by winning using a computer program, let them. If that is the only way for them to win, I can hardly imagine that would be fun, since actually they are not winning, but the programmer is. If you would really want to know if someone uses a program, analyze their games using a program and see if their endgame is perfect or not.

If you think an interesting question is, who is using a program for their games, you can also ask, who is determining what moves to make by trying out different moves on a board. This is just as much cheating I think.

The only way to make sure of a fair game is playing real-time games (or even better real-life games). Anyone in for a real-time game at Brettspielwelt ? ;-)

In any case, I do not use a program nor a board, I am just having fun winning and losing my games on my own.

To analyze on board is not the same as using a program I think. After all, one of the reasons to play turn based games (play by Mail) is the chance to analyze in depth. Using any possibilities at hand, books, pen and paper I consider allowed.

Even using a software for analysing is ok. Just repeating the moves of a program is of course pointless and stupid.

If you need to play fast games just play on real time servers :-)

Crelo is right, I think. I haven't analysed situations on board for a year or two, but that's because I'm lazy. I would not feel bad if I did.

With some games a computer is hands down better than any human, and with such games using computer easily spoils the game. With Dvonn unbeatable computer program is luckily yet to be made.

It would be nice to know, if one is playing against human, computer, computer aided human or perhaps even a team of humans, but I don't think we ever will know for sure. Too bad, but not too bad.

I play without a computer help. In fact: I do know how to program (not games though). If I knew a good strategy for a robot, I'd rather apply it myself. I don't like brute force approaches. So the computer's strategy would not be better than my own strategy. Of course a robot can think ahead easier than I can.

The only bots in the competition who are worth mentioning are Jan's program and RoRoRo. Everybody knows they are bots. And it's fun to try to beat them and spot their weaknesse. I've beaten RoRoRo 2 tournament games in a row now (won last one today). Of the last 3 lost tournament games for RoRoRo, he lost twice from me ;-) (and he has won 16 tournament games in that period). It's fun to explore where bots are missing things (cut offs for RoRoRo). I could not have won from same ranked players (1900s-2000s) with that frequency.

Sometimes I think a bit ahead (never use any aids like pen and paper or a board), not too much. And there are periods I don't think at all, which drops my rankings ;-)

If a game becomes challenging, I may want to look ahead multiple steps. Using a computer would be no fun at all.

For me : just my poor neurones !!! :-)

They are available where these robots?

I shall not even know how to do to use them. But if you explain to me…

lol

(sorry for my broken english)

I am guilty of having (ab)used my program in the past. Can't remember when I did this for the last time, at least I know it is several years ago.

On a side-note; detecting a cheater is impossible since a 100% human player could just (accidantly) play a perfect game… (eh…what is perfect?)

Detecting a cheater is even harder than that, as a human can look at the advice of the computer, and then deliberately play something that wasn't the one with the best predicted score.

I did that with GWG a bit - I'd come up with my own short-list, then run my script, and then select whichever of my prefered words was the best, ignoring any words that were better but were non-words, foreign, archaic, or simply invisible to my eyes.

See also the 33-31 victories in 8x8 othello…

I remember Kris Burm (the designer) saying to me: “Don't think too long or too hard about your moves. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun!”

(Of course his brain works twice as quick as mine ;-)

So what fun would it be to use a computer to play in your place? Their loss!

I completely agree with that statement about not thinking long and hard :-) At the World Championship in Prague, we played with a Fischer clock, started at 16 minutes after the setup phase, and we got 5 seconds extra for each move we made. I managed to win one of my games with 16 minutes and 23 seconds left on the clock :-) Seeing my amount of time left on the clock increase added to the fun I had ;-)

Given that you've brought this up, I'll remark that I am *sometimes* almost completely the opposite, at least when it comes to dots and boxes. I typically play the first few moves of a game of dots and boxes here quickly, but by the time I'm playing my moves 6,7,8,9,10 I could easily spend an hour on a move. And then after that the game is probably done and dusted and I'm back to playing instantly. On the other hand I have played quick games before and I enjoy these too—but spending an hour mulling over a move is something that I can get a great deal of enjoyment out of, so it sort of contradicts Kris Burm's general sentiment above.

I play connect 4 in the same way; opening book for the first moves, and then some deeper thought, and then play out the endgame. But here I will typically spend under 15 minutes on a move—but again, the fun is in *winning*, right? ;-) and to make sure you win, you sometimes have to work very hard.

No. The fun is in having fun. I have fun pretending that I might be able to beat Xander. I hope he has fun pretending the he might lose.

I dont need to pretend, I will lose from everyone once in a while, we just need to play enough games (which by itself is plenty of fun). FatPhil beat me twice ;-)

For me the fun sometimes also lies in how difficult can you make it for your opponent. With Xander I had several games with a 3 Dvonn cluster that were seriously fun, though I lost big time. Sometimes it's just about the experiment. I like to take some risk and go for a bold strategy. Works to beat RoRoRo every now and then ;-)

but yet LG is ok with having Rororo playing tournaments and effecting our ratings and such? This has always bothered me. I can stand losing to a human, but what's the point of coming to a site like this and losing to a bot?

I can understand the frustration of losing to a bot.

But I can't understand how one player - human, bot or otherwise - can affect the ratings of hundreds.

What is the point of coming to this site and losing to a human?

I also do not play with a robot. And like to think as long as it takes to win the game..!

Just for reference, in dvonn.mc.2010.jul.1.8 game 1215063, both José and I will be playing with the assistance of our self-written programs. Not program vs. program, but assisted human vs. assisted human. We of course both expect the robots to kick into brute-force mode long before a mortal human realistically can, so the human involvement will decrease abruptly after a while.

I just saw FatPhil's remark and it reminded me that Jose plays with a program, but without the honesty of RoRoRo or Jansprogram who at least say they are software. In my last game against Jose (1213680), in move 66 he admitted that he uses a piece of software to play the first 60-odd moves and then plays the endgame himself.

I think this is a dishonest way of playing and I will resign any game against Jose before moving from now on.

It must be noted that Jose did change his nick for a while such that it was clear he was at least in part machine. However, he seems to have changed it back.

My understanding is that he plays the early moves as a human, and then just kicks in as a robot for the final brute-force endgame.

To be honest, as I've (a) not set up RoRoRo to assist me in any way, and (b) not separated the placement code into a program separate from RoRoRo's internals (and thus physically cannot get any machine assistance when placing), it's a complete drag playing as a human-program combo (I have no GUI, it's all command line), and I do not have the inclination to play any more games that way. (Until I have a GUI, and have extracted the placement code…)

I similarly am not playing against Jose anymore and have resigned all games in which I ended up against him for a while now. I started doing so after he informed me himself of the fact that he uses a program to play the endgame .I have no problem to play against a computer program, and I like playing against strong human players, but playing against a very strong player who used a program to play the endgame flawlessly, that is too much for me. Against a program, I can adjust my style of play, but with a mix….

Meanwhile I'm surprisingly in Top20 without any help.

I don't think that I really belong to that group and league 1,

but let's see how long I can stay in.

Indeed I don't really have a clue why I win some games.

I just play.

Of Course thinking about my moves, but not like in streetsoccer where I have clear thinkings behind and also see what mistakes I made.

I got some few hints in 1 of my first games at brettspielwelt and I have some prefered ways to play, but I am still surprised about the results.

So, like every season my goal is to win 1-2 games to rescue my honor.

In the championship, so far my aim has always been to 'survive' in the first league. I am very happy that it seems that I have reached that goal already :-)

I do not think it would be as easy to program a world champion Dvonn program as a world championship chess program.   Perhaps I'm wrong.  Anyway, only Jan C. de Graaf's program ever cracked the top 10… Is that right?  As in chess, computer programs become more powerful in the end game, but by then we humans usually have a huge advantage ;-)

Gord!

Dvonn on a board double the size would destroy any chance of a computer win.  It is only because the board is so nice and compact that they have any chance.

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I'm currently within the top 20 DVONN players and I'm playing in first league of the championship.I don't use any computer program for analyzing my games, I just use my brain.Sometimes, when I think I'm in a crucial position (in midgame or endgame) I use my physical DVONN board to analyze some moves (especially when trying to find some unorthodox/counter-intuitive moves that are worth playing).

Michael

I'm developing a Tzaar program currently. You'll know when it's playing because it'll use the Jan's program account. I'm only a novice player, so, I'm really curious if my bot will be able to teach itself enough to get a decent rating. The eval() will be partly auto-tuning.

But… will it beat Waltz? (http://iuuk.mff.cuni.cz/~vesely/tzaar/)

I've read about Waltz. Clearly Waltz has been built with a sound scientific approach. I do have my doubts about the eval() though. I'm just a hobbyist having significant experience with general programming, quite some A.I. programming (Othello, Chess, Gipf, Dvonn, “Klaverjassen”, Go (very bad!), and an above average 'feel' for these kind of games.

Time will tell if my program is able to push the top human players to new heights;)

I've never used a program, and contrary to most people, I don't mind playing against bots (except when their ranking isn't indicative of how strong they really are). I rarely spend more than a few seconds on moves, except for difficult games where it looks like there is very little room for mistakes. On very rare occasions I can think about a move for a few minutes, but I never resort to writing things down or analyzing positions offline. That said, I have lost quite a few games because I realized too late that my opponent was playing better than expected ;)