A new backgammon robot

Well we all know that backgammon is a game that runs on luck and skill. But we also know that several backgammon sites have computer robots or software programs that run independently to give you a game if you are in the beginner or intermediate level of game playing. Its also not very easy to make out exactly which online players are virtual or real; and that is a testament to how good the software has become over the years. The very first computer program that was used to play the game was invented by a computer science professor called Hans Berliner from the Carnegie-Mellon University.

This program was free for download and use on the ARPANET( the great grandfather of internet.) In a few years time, the Berliner program was taken up and tweaked to a much better condition by a computer software specialist called Kim Brand and thus was born the computer backgammon revolution. Over the years newer and newer systems were invented to create programs that could stand on their own with a backup software to deal with any permutation or combination offered by human players. The software became world famous when Brand took the newly created program and placed it in a Monte Carlo Casino with a $10,000 bet that no one could win against it! And the computer won which was a huge surprise for those times!

After that , however problems did creep up! Of the 2000 sets of computer backgammon sets which were created, less than a 100 were sold and the software is no where to be found now! Now the same game uses neural networks by which the computer can predict, learn and actually teach itself new moves to win the game.

But recent news has been heartening! A new neural net based programming backgammon game has been released called eXtreme Backgammon which makes the old programs seem outdated and slow. This one is also working on a neural net processor but it can go as deep as seven-ply which means that the game can predict 202 possible positions and up to 4002 positions.