RE: [Bug-gnubg] smartest program

[Ian Shaw]

        From:  Wojciech Zaremba
        In your opinion which program to play backgammon is best one ??
gnu backgammon, snowie, jelly ??
        

Hi Wojciech,

I would say Gnubg, although you should note that opinions on this forum
are likely to be biased!

Gnubg and Snowie are almost equally strong players. Gnubg may have a
tiny advantage, according to tests carried out by Michael Depreli.
Jellyfish is an older program, and is weaker. BgBlitz is another very
strong player. They are all probably better than you.

Gnubg is free. The basic version of Jellyfish is free, and is small
enough to fit on a floppy disk. BGBlitz is cheap. Snowie is expensive.

I wouldn't buy Snowie at least until the promised version 5 is released.
The developers say it's playing ability has improved, so the new version
may be stronger than gnubg.

Gnubg is faster than Snowie for rollouts, and can roll out plays
according to the match score.

Many people prefer Snowie's user interface. I've never used it so I
can't comment.

Snowie can do batch rollouts; Gnubg can't.

I recommend using gnubg at first - the price is attractive. You can
decide about Snowie later - they may still have a 30-day trial version
available for download.

There is also a great version of BgBlitz that runs on mobile phones,
BgBlitz2Go.

Hope this helps,
-- Ian