GNU Backgammon (gnubg) is a strong backgammon program (world-class with a bearoff database installed) usable either as an engine by other programs or as a standalone backgammon game. It is able to play and analyze both money games and tournament matches, evaluate and roll out positions, and more.
In addition to supporting simple play, it also has extensive analysis features, a tutor mode, adjustable difficulty, and support for exporting annotated games.
It currently plays at about the level of a championship flight tournament player and is gradually improving.
gnubg can be played on numerous on-line backgammon servers, such as the First Internet Backgammon Server (FIBS).
Features include:
- A command line interface (with full command editing features if GNU readline is available) that lets you play matches and sessions against GNU Backgammon with a rough ASCII representation of the board on text terminals.
- Support for a GTK+ interface with a graphical board window. Both 2D and 3D graphics are available.
- Tournament match and money session cube handling and cubeful play.
- Support for both 1-sided and 2-sided bearoff databases: 1-sided bearoff database for 15 checkers on the first 6 points and optional 2-sided database kept in memory. Optional larger 1-sided and 2-sided databases stored on disk.
- Automated rollouts of positions, with lookahead and race variance reduction where appropriate. Rollouts may be extended.
- Functions to generate legal moves and evaluate positions at varying search depths.
- Neural net functions for giving cubeless evaluations of all other contact and race positions.
- Automatic and manual annotation (analysis and commentary) of games and matches.
- Record keeping of statistics of players in games and matches (both native inside GNU Backgammon and externally using relational databases and Python).
- Loading and saving analyzed games and matches as .sgf files (Smart Game Format).
- Exporting positions, games and matches to: (.eps) Encapsulated Postscript, (.gam) Jellyfish Game, (.html) HTML, (.mat) Jellyfish Match, (.pdf) PDF, (.png) Portable Network Graphics, (.pos) Jellyfish Position, (.ps) PostScript, (.sgf) Gnu Backgammon File, (.tex) LaTeX, (.txt) Plain Text, (.txt) Snowie Text.
- Import of matches and positions from a number of file
ormats: (.bkg) Hans Berliner’s BKG Format, (.gam) GammonEmpire Game, (.gam) PartyGammon Game, (.mat) Jellyfish Match, (.pos) Jellyfish Position, (.sgf) Gnu Backgammon File, (.sgg) GamesGrid Save Game, (.tmg) TrueMoneyGames, (.txt) Snowie Text. - Python Scripting.
- Native language support; 10 languages complete or in progress.
Website: www.gnu.org/software/gnubg
Support: Documentation
Developer: Joseph Heled, Oystein Johansen, Jonathan Kinsey, David Montgomery, Jim Segrave, Joern Thyssen, Gary Wong and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
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