Re: GnuBG - Money Game Sessions [ Request ]

[Philippe Michel]

On Sun, Jul 02, 2023 at 11:10:23AM +0100, Dariusz Stachowski wrote:

> There is an issue I have with money game sessions. If players are both
> 'Gnu Backgammon' then the program automatically makes moves and starts a
> new game of the session once the previous one has finished. And this
> will continue without end. In the desktop version of GnuBG I can
> interrupt the match, but then there appears to be no way of restarting
> it. The same is also true in the console version of GnuBG. I can do
> Ctrl+C to interrupt but cannot resume.
> 
> To get around this it would be useful if there were a match length
> parameter for money game sessions so that the session could end after a
> certain number of games have been played. In the console version of
> GnuBG this could be done via the command 'new session [length]'. The
> session would then not run forever.

> Why would this be useful for me? It is because I would like to be able
> to have console-GnuBG run a computer vs. computer session where one of
> the players is ranked expert ( 2-ply ) with the other ranked grandmaster
> ( 3-ply ) and have the session run for a sufficient number of games for
> me to quantify how much better 3-ply is over 2-ply.

Game / Play computer turn in the GUI and "play" in the CLI should 
restart the interrupted session. Having an optional parameter to the 
"new session" command would indeed be useful for the kind of experiment 
you describe. 
 
> Would it be possible for this to be added to the next release?

I will do it, but probably only for the CLI.

Regarding the comparison between 2- and 3-ply, note that they are quite 
close in strength. You would need *many* games to not only verify which 
one is stronger but to quantify by how much by this method.