the gameterrorist

Free money from skill game sites

2012-01-31T14:21:00.000-08:00

I already mentioned in a previous post that I like to play games for fun and money. Now it's time to compare two of the leading websites in terms of free money. Yes, they offer freerolls if you are a real money player there. I have accounts on three major sites:

* king.com
* gameduell.de
* worldwinner.com

I don't play on worldwinner anymore because I didn't like the fact that you can only play there when using Internet Explorer. Because it didn't offer any special games and take about the same fee as the other sites I stopped playing there. So I'll only compare the free money offers of king.com and gameduell.de.

king.com

Each day there are a couple of freerolls of the same game. All this tournemants start at a fixed time and are open for 2 hours. So you have to logon at the right time to take part in them. Usually the price pool is 50€ or 100€. On weekends there are three additional freerolls lasting from Friday to Sunday. Those also have bigger prices. The problem with all those offers is that you always have to compete against thousands of other players. You have to be really good at the specific game to win even cents (not even mentioning making the top ten and getting a few euros/dollars). Over the last two month I made exactly 3 cents from those free games while playing about 15 of them. *thumbs down*

gameduell.de

At this site it's a lot easier to win free money. Each day you can play against the 'Joker' to win 50 cents. Every day you have to play a different game but this opponent isn't so hard. I never practiced before my free game and won about 45% of them. The game is available all day so you can logon any time you want to. Of course there are no big wins possible but if you login anyway it's free money. And it's easy to get.
Over the last two month I made 16.50 € from those free games while playing about 45 of them. *thumbs up*

conclusion

No matter where you play free money is always nice...even if it's just cents. I wouldn't really bother to check into king.com everyday to check if they offer a game i'm good at. And I miss them way too often. Logging into gameduell once a day and playing a different game fits into my schedule :-)

Do you also play on any of this skill game sites or do you know another ?

Stealing on and offline

2011-11-08T13:51:00.000-08:00

BLR technologies cheats at online craps

According to a post from the wizard of odds and other sources BLR technologies is cheating at their online craps game. The win rate over a sample of 328 rolls was only 24.7% (while it should be 49.29% for betting on the pass line). This expectation for such a event over this sample size is 1 in 3,940,183,270,432,190,000. So if you don't like losing (even more than you normally should expect to) don't play at online casinos using the BLR technologies software. This includes the following casinos:

Legends Sports
World Wide Wagering

And the second news is from the offline world but also features being robbed:

6000 copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stolen

The demand for this new game seems to be quite high. On their way to retailers two different trucks with the game have been stopped and robbed of their delivery. The first delivery was crashed by a robbed car and as soon as the drivers wanted to check out the damage they were robbed be masked gangsters.
About one hour later a second truck was stopped by a parked car and armed robbers stole their load too. A total damage of about 800.000€. And lots and lots of unhappy gamers who now have to wait even longer until they receive their copy of their game.
But the bad guys should be pretty issue to spot when 6000 origin accounts send their data to the homebase ;-)

So if you what to be safe from online cheating, spyware and brutal force in real life make sure to buy Skyrim. The latest release of The elder scrolls series (aka the reason why I went to gamescom 2011).

Back from gamescom 2011

2011-08-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

I am back from the gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany. The final numbers are not out yet but it seems that the gamescom had another record year. A total of 550 different companys and agencies had stands. I have to admit I didn't count them but it were a whole lot of them. Including the major distributors (Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bethesda, Ubisoft,...) and console creators (sony, nintendo, microsoft) showing off their latest products.
Especially Blizzard and EA had huge stands and stages which seem to occupy a third of one of the halls each. Too bad that they choose to hide there latest titels inside their stands which meant that you had to get in line to see anything. For a peek at Battlefield 3 (EA) there was a line so long you had to wait 6 hours to get inside.

A gimplse through the exit door revealed that the lucky guys got to play a bit but I'm not sure for how long. My personal guess....Not worth six hours waiting.
The same can be said about Modern Warfare3 (Activision) and Diablo 3 (Blizzard). And sadly my own private favorite that I wanted to see: The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (Bethesda). All had hours of waiting which frankly I did not sacrifice. I'm not sure if this was clever marketing by the big guys. Sure you can only give a few people the opportunity to actually test a game but showing so little to the masses seems like a bad move to me.
Sony did a good job to use the current hype about minecraft to promote their new Xperia Play. They had youtube 'celebs' Lewis and Simon sign funny little block heads from minecraft.

Not sure if it really help Sony to advertise for their new mobile gaming plattform but it sure looked like fun and spread the word even further about minecraft (if that's even possible).
My personal highlight was playing Jagged Alliance - Online and talking to one of the developers. It's really amazing what can be done with browser games today. It looks great, all movements are smooth and controls are simple. If you put it into full screen you won't notice it's a browser game. The game itself is free to play and is financed by premium content so it's worth a try.
Next year I need to make sure to go to gamescom on a day which is not open to the public. Not seeing anything of the big games was really frustrating.

Oh, last but not least I've got a gift code for the first to grab it. It's for another online game called Wizard101 which is also free to play. With this code you get 5000 gold coins and a special pet/ride to use for 7 days. So however uses it have fun with it and please leave a comment so others know that the code is already taken.
And the code is: 7NP57-42CJ-9DLD-UMJO

Winning at roulette

2011-07-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

I’m going to tell you a sure way to win at roulette…for free. All you have to do is double your bet every time you lose until you win. You properly heard this before. The only problem is that it is not working over a long time. It might fool you because you will win small amounts for some time but sooner or later you’ll lose it all back and then some. The only sure way to win long term is to be the casino.
So let’s take a closer look at this strategy. First of all it’s called Martingale and has been played properly as long as roulette itself. It has just a few very simple rules:
• Start with one betting unit (e.g. 10$)
• If you win => pocket the win and start over again
• If you lose => double your bet (going from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32….)
That’s it ! This will win you one betting unit most of the time. And give you a false sense of security. Until you hit that one big losing streak which will erase all wins.

The above table shows all possible combinations after five rounds (without the fatal green zero(s)). Without the green zeros the chance to hit red or black is fifty percent each. Now analyze the possible outcomes if you bet on red every time following the rules above:

As you can see in the above tables you will bust once out of 32 times. When you do you will lose a total of 31 units. The other 31 times you will win one unit each. This results in an expected value (EV) of:
(31/32 * 1) + (1/32 * -31) = 0
So you are not making a profit…but you are also not losing like I said before. This is because, as already mentioned above, we neglected the zero(s) which is making the roulette unprofitable. But showing no profit if the rules are not as bad as in the casino should already demonstrate that the method is not working as advertised.
If we include the green zeros into the above tables the chance to win is getting smaller (lower than fifty percent). Hitting the correct color has a chance of 18/37 = ~48.6% (single zero) or 18/38 = ~47.4 (double zero). This results in a negative EV for this betting system which is called Martingale.

How to beat poker - the basics

2010-02-23T14:41:00.000-08:00

I am not talking about basics like pot odds and winning percentages. There are some principles which are even more basic and fundamental to all forms of poker.

Table/Seatselection
Choose your opponents wisely. If you wanna win money make sure you are the best or at least one of the better players at the table. Playing against better opponents might improve your own game if you are willing to learn from them. But you should be aware that you don't get these lessons for free. Others like to match themself with the best players around. That is just stupid..Leave your ego away from the table. It will just cost you a lot of money. You should also try to be on the left of bad players. This gives you the chance to isolate these players preflop and play one on one against them.

Bankroll Management
Even if you are a winning player poker is still a game of chance. You can and will lose versus weaker players sometimes. And sometimes this might stretch over a long period of hands. Even solid winners of swings of 100 big bets every now and than. So make sure that you can handle these times. You should have at least 500 BB for the stakes you are playing. If you play professionally it should be even more. So you don't have to move down in the stakes you are playing. If you have less than 300 BB for your current limit you should move down to avoid going broke.

Don't tilt/Play your A game
This seems simple, right ? But i guess it is what turns themost players into losers. They know how to play. When to fold or raise but they don't do it at times. I am not only talking about the obvious signs of tilting like going full phil hellmuth and scream at everyone and everything. The more dangerous form of tilt is not when you are in full berserker mode. After a couple of suckouts or setups/coolers you start making bad calldowns or become a maniac. DON'T !
Don't let your feelings influence your game. If you notice that your style of play changes stop playing.

Good luck at the tables everyone!

Klondike Solitaire - is it beatable ?

2009-10-06T04:09:00.000-07:00

I am one of those people who can play klondike (sometimes also just called solitaire) for hours and hours. And I was always looking for the best strategy to play. When searching on the internet I noticed that there is next to no websites on strategy and zero information on the expected value (EV) of this game.
One of the few pages with some insight on this topic is OddThinking but this is a slightly different game than the one I am interested in. I prefer the vegas style game where you can only move through the deck exactly once and any card that has been moved up has to stay up.
As stated before I could not find an analysis of this game online which is strange because this game can even be played in some online casinos for real money. So I build myself a simulator to play it automatically. Here are my first results:
My best strategy so far is able to move up about 9.3 cards in average. Which would result in a house edge of 7%. I am confident that it still can be improved.
A Monte Carlo run of 1000 plays per deck (meaning a certain deck or single game is played 1000 times with totally random moves) is able to score a average of 14.5 cards. Of course this value can never be reached by any "real" strategy it will only give a upper threshold.
A "real" strategy has to make a decision on the next move by the information which is currently available (we call this a information set). Since Klondike is a game of imperfect information (because some cards are still hidden) there might be different games which have the same information set. All visible cards are exactly the same but the hidden cards are distributed differently. Our strategy always has to make the same move which of course will result in different results on each unique game. Monte Carlo will choose different moves each time and will ignore the information set. That is the reason why a strategy will never beat the Monte Carlo approach (if the game has imperfect information).

More to follow.....

Miniconomy - economic browser game

2008-09-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Well the blog is also about pc games. So here is the latest browser game i am testing

An economic browser game. It doesn't have the nicest graghics around but it seems fairly complex. Every movement costs gas and everytime you search your land for resources the condition if it gets worse.
You can choose to dig for resources or create a more advanced product. You may even found your own bank or try to get elected as mayor. Even a life in crime is possible. It is totally up to you....Now see you in miniconomy....You can find my shop in Centropolis.

Professional Go player defeated by computer

2008-08-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I wrote about checkers being completly solved. And i was happy to say that Go is still something everyone can win against a computer opponent. About 2 weeks ago I was proven wrong :-(
A supercomputer matched a professional Go player. Kim MyungWan, an 8 dan pro (9 is the maximum) was defeated by the program MoGo running on an IBM Power 575 Hydro-Cluster system. This supercomputer (located at Amsterdam, Netherlands) has a peak speed of 60 Teraflop per second. So it is save to say that the average player will not face such a opponent every other day but we all know how fast the computational speed is increasing.
Go still is one of the hardest games for a computer and it seems like only speed and mass (storage that is) enables such a system to beat a human player. It is still a long way to go for all working on artificial intelligence (AI) to make a computer "think".
On the other hand the human brain is nothing else.....and even if we are slow at math and things like that the human brain is working incredible fast because there is so much going on at the same time. And we a freaking good at guessing ;-)
Many of us would struggle to solve a quadratic equation. Still each and everyone is able to catch a ball or at least to teach it by predicting its flight curve. That is just the same and you even do it without pen and paper or even a calculator. Never correct but always close enough to survive. So keep making mistakes but enjoy your games and life.....

Improve your chess with Chess Tactics Server

2008-07-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Here is another way besides the personal chess trainer to improve your chess skills. The Chess Tactics Server offers 23803 different chess problems of different difficulty. And the number is growing.
You can choose to solve the puzzles as a guest or create a account. If you get a totally free account (you only need to choose a nick and enter a email address) you can trace your rating development. Also if you get a account you will always get problems that match your rating.
The problems are not always typical puzzles where you have to find a mate in X. There are also lots of exercises where you just have to realiz the best move is to take back a figure.
The only thing I don't like about the site is that each puzzle has to be solved with very little time. So it is a good way to improve your blitz chess. You should make sure to redo puzzles you didn't solve on the first attempt. Solving same on later tries will not affect your rating on the site but will help you to improve your chess skills. Remember most of the time chess is just detection patterns and move accourdingly. Chess Tactics Server will help you in doing so.
Now have fun solving problems and dream of chess patterns all day and night :-)

Duplicate Poker - Poker as a game of skill

2008-02-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

There is a new pokersite called DuplicatePoker. But what is the difference between this site and all others already on the net ?
Poker on Duplicate is different to what you know. You don't compete against the other players on your table. There is always one other with the exact same deck of cards and one other player who gets the same cards as you. After a couple of hands your results are compared to this player. This way the element of chance is reduced because the way you play your hands is more important than the cards you get. Because the element of skill is increased DuplicatePoker claims to be not a gambling site therefor they are open to US players and everyone who is allowed to play games of skill for money.
If you sign up now they will give you a free $3 to start playing with. You can cash out this amount after a couple of hands (a couple of players from the 2+2 forums have already cashed out successfully). They are also offering a 200% up to $100 bonus if you cash in.
The only downside right now is that the games play really slow because each table has to wait for a other table to finish first. Now go give it a try at:

Skill games for fun --- or money

2008-01-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

You can play a wide range of different games like from good old pinball, pool billard or backgammon to luxor. Play solitaire, freecell or sudoku sweep. Shooters or quiz shows and many many others. All for jewels (just to boost your ego and get nice avatar gadgets) or play for real money.
It's really a lot of fun playing all these games against others around the world in big jackpot games. There is also a strange version of chess on a 5x7 board called chesster. You only got one of each
light figure to play (one rook, one bishop, one knight). I really have to take a deeper look into this
game. Also you just have a certain amount of time per move and if you run out of time it is your opponents turn.
Besides chesster i can mostly be found playing sudoku sweep, quiz queen and pinball. Oh, by the way site is called king.com.

PokerParadime - the long term in no time

2008-01-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

PokerParadime is a new site to play texas hold'em. But it is not build to play for cash. It is totally web based so you do not have to download any software and install anything. You play against other players online or against bots. And here is the clue, bots are not only allowed to play it is what the site is build for. As soon as you have played a couple of hands you can turn yourself into a virtual player who will continue to play just like you did. So you can train your virtual self and then check how you would do with this style after thousands of hands. Because the bot also plays while you are not online.
There is no fee or anything else involved but you can not win any real money. But it is a really funny website and a good way to check your moves. My virtual me is currently in the top 20 of 354 registered players. How good is your bot ?

Poker: September Graph

2007-10-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

After my bad downswing September turned out fine in the end. I was able to maintain my aces status at PartyPoker and i am also happy with my winning rate. I won about 200 big bets within 9200 hands. That is 2.60 BB/100 which is actually more then good. I guess i was running good at the end of the month. So here is the graph:

I guess it is pretty easy to tell where the downswing hit me. It is part of the game and this graph shows that playing "good" will be rewarded in the end.

Anand is World Chess Champion 2007

2007-09-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Anand played remis against Leko in his last game and is the new World Chess Champion. Kramnik won his last match against Aronian but that did not help. Gelfand, the closest pursuer of Anand, is still playing but even winning will not make a difference.

Here are the results:
Svilder - Grischuk 1-0
Anand - Leko 1/2-1/2
Kramnik - Aronian 1-0
Morozevich - Gelfand 1/2-1/2

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 13 result

2007-09-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Anand defends his one point lead. The game between Kramnik and Gelfand ends in a draw. Only a single round left and Anand is ahead one point to Gelfand. Here are the results of today:

Leko - Morozevich 1-0
Aronian - Svidler 1/2-1/2
Gelfand - Kramnik 1/2-1/2
Grischuk - Anand 1/2-1/2

Anand only needs to draw against Leko to be the new world chess champion. Gelfand would need help of Leko and win his own game against Morozevich.

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 12 result

2007-09-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

Today Gelfand and Kramnik were able to catch up a bit. Both won their games while Anand draws. Well Anand has still one point more then Gelfand, his closest pursuer and there are only two rounds left. Maybe Anand will get a bit nervous and we will have a thrilling final. Anyway here are today's results:

Svidler - Anand 1/2-1/2
Aronian - Gelfand 0-1
Kramnik - Leko 1-0
Morozevich - Grischuk 1-0

Backgammon - Opening rolls pt. 2

2007-09-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome to part two of the opening rolls at backgammon. If you missed part one you can find it here.

The best possible roll which is not a blocking roll is 6-5. It is called the lover's leap. You can move one of your back men all the way to the secure 13-point.

Bringing your back men into the game is one of the aims in the beginning. Preventing your opponent from blocking them out.

The rolls 6-2, 6-3 and 6-4 are basically all played the same way. Use the 6 to escape your back men to the 16-point. The number of the second die is used to move a checker from the 13-point. This will give you more possibilities to make the 5 or 7-point in the next turn.

You might have noticed that 6-4 could have build the 2-point. So why did we not build an inner board point with this roll. Because the 2-point is not a real blocking point. There is a huge gap between the 2-point and the 6-point. Make sure you do not occupy the 1 and 2-point to early in the game because they might be too far away from the action.

The rolls 2-1, 4-1 and 5-1 are also all played in a similar way. With these slotting rolls you move the higher number with a checker from the 13-point. The idea behind this play is again to have more moves to build the 5 or 7-point with your next roll. The actual slotting play is done by moving to the 5-point. You occupy the 5-point with a single checker. Leaving a blot where your enemy can only hit it with a single number is called slotting. The possibility your opponent hits you is pretty slim but you have got a good chance to make the 5-point.

That is a real aggressive play but it will reward you in the long run. Building the 5-point is a big advantage and getting hit every now and then is not that bad at the beginning of the game.

Hope this will help you all to improve your game and remember there is still one more port with opening rolls to come.

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 10 results

2007-09-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Seems like Anand is going to be champion. Well there are still four more rounds but with one point ahead of the field, he is on the right track. Drawing against Kramnik today and thereby keeping him 1,5 points away is a major step. Also his closest pursuer - Gelfand, who is "just" one point behind - could not gain a full point today. Here are the results of today:

Svidler - Morozevich -still running-
Aronian - Grischuk 1-0
Gelfand - Leko 1/2-1/2
Kramnik - Anand 1/2-1/2

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 9 results

2007-09-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

Morozevich beats Kramnik while Anand split points with his opponent. So he gains another half of a point against Kramnik. Gelfand, who is currently second, is still playing.

Here are the results:
Morozevich - Kramnik 1-0
Anand - Aronian 1/2-1/2
Grischuk - Gelfand 1-0
Leko - Svidler 1/2-1/2

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 7 results

2007-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Anand strikes for another point while Kramnik draws. Now he is a whole point in front of the field. Here are today's results:

Svilder - Aronian 1/2-1/2
Kramnik - Gelfand 1/2-1/2
Anand - Grischuk 1-0
Morozevich - Leko 1/2-1/2

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 6 results

2007-09-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Three games finished so far and all ended in a draw. Gelfand is still playing against Morozevich. Here is the list of all games:

Leko - Anand 1/2-1/2
Aronian - Kramnik 1/2-1/2
Grischuk - Svidler 1/2-1/2
Gelfand - Morozevich 1-0

Update:
Gelfand wins against Morozevich

Backgammon - Opening rolls pt. 1

2007-09-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

We already talked about the opening goals in an earlier post. Now it is time to see how you the possible opening rolls can be used to perform the first step. In this post i will concentrate on the blocking rolls.

The luckiest roll for your first move is 3-1. This allows you to build the 5-point.

Blocking another point in your home board, so your opponent has one point less to reenter the game if a checker is hit. Making the 5-point also helps blocking the back men of your enemy.

Another good first roll is 4-2. This allows to make the 4-point.

Basically offering the same advantages as 3-1 but leaving the 5-point as a gap. If white is able to reach the 5 point your chance to trap them and to build a prim shrinks.

A little weaker is the roll 5-3 and making the 3-point. I guess you already understand why ;-)
It is building a point in your home board but the 3-point is not a strong point alone and leaving a bigger gap does not help.

The last blocking roll is 6-1. The best move is to make the 7-point also known as the bar-point.

Not considered as strong as 3-1 because it is not building a point within the home board but making the 7-point prevents white from escaping with his first roll. Also building a 3-point prime (from 6 to 9) as a very good start.

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 5 results

2007-09-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Three games are already finished and today some players scored full points. Anand and Grischuk were able to win with the white pieces. The match between Leko and Kramnik ended in a draw. Gelfand against Aronian is still on. Here are the results so far:

Leko - Kramnik 1/2-1/2
Anand - Svidler 1-0
Grischuk - Morozevich 1-0
Gelfand - Aronian 1-0

After this round, Anand is leading the scoreboard being the only player with 3.5 points.

Update:
And the last game is finished as well. Gelfand also wins with the white stones. Only Kramnik was able to achieve a draw with black today.

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 4 results

2007-09-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here are the results of the 4th round:

Svilder - Gelfand 1/2-1/2
Aronian - Leko 1-0
Kramnik - Grischuk 1/2-1/2
Morozevich - Anand 1/2-1/2

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 3 finished

2007-09-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

Here are the results of round 3 so far. The match Leko against Gelfand is still on yet.
Morozevich - Svidler 1-0
Anand - Kramnik 1/2-1/2
Grischuk - Aronian 1/2-1/2
Leko - Gelfand 1/2-1/2

Update:
The last game just finished. After over 7 hours of play and exactly 100 moves Leko and Gelfand agreed on a draw.

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 2 finished

2007-09-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the late update but i was pretty wasted last night. So here are the results of round two:

Peter Svidler - Peter Leko 1/2 - 1/2
Boris Gelfand - Alexander Grischuk 1/2 - 1/2
Levon Aronian - Viswanathan Anand 0 - 1
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexander Morozevich 1- 0

So Anand and Kramnik scored a full point and are now leading. Today is the clash of the titans as they have to play each other. We will see if one of them will be able to take the lead.

World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) 2007

2007-09-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Today starts the World Championship of Online Poker 2007. The best online players will come together in 23 different events to determine a champion in the different variants like Hold em, Omaha, 7 card Stud or good old 5 card draw. PokerStars will guarantee a total price pool of 15 million dollars for all events and each champion will receive a bracelet. Check out the schedule and buy ins at the PokerStars homepage

World Chess Championship 2007 - Round 1 finished

2007-09-13T15:51:00.001-07:00

The first round is already finished. All games ended in a draw. See the results below:

Anand - Gelfand 1/2 - 1/2
Grischnuk - Leko 1/2 - 1/2
Kramnik - Svidler 1/2 - 1/2
Morozevich - Aronian 1/2 - 1/2

So my first bet was already wrong. I did bet 1€ on Anand winning with white.

World Chess Championship 2007

2007-09-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

Today starts the World Chess Championship in Mexico City. Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Peter Leko, Peter Svidler, Boris Gelfand, Alexander Grischuk and Alexander Morozevich are fighting for the title. Most people expect a head to head race between the current champion Kra
mnik and Anand, who is leader of the ELO table. But maybe "youngster" Aronian will show more of his brilliant play.
Check the official website for updates on the tourament.

Update:
Because the official website seems to be pretty slow on updates you might want to check chessbase for regular updates on the games.

Backgammon – Opening goals

2007-09-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

In the book "Win at backgammon" by Bill Robertie, he mentions four key goals in the opening:

Hit your opponent
Every checker you send back onto the bar gives you an advantage in the race. If your opponent has to reenter to the board he is missing valuable rolls for other things. But remember, sending a checker back at the beginning of the game might not win you the race. More important is to "steal" part of your enemies roll, so he less options to choose from and you can develop more safely.

Build blocking points
Backgammon is not a pure race. Both players do not run independently around the board. Even more affective than hitting a checker is blocking it out. If you are able to build a full prime your enemy can not move to his home board and win. Even if he hits you again and again, you have all the time to move your checkers back to where you want same to be.
Therefor building blocking points - mainly the 5- and 7- point- in the opening and blocking the backmen of your opponent is giving you a huge advantage.

Build an anchor
An anchor is a point made by your backmen in your opponent's home board. It prevents your enemy from closing the board and makes it harder from him to block your stones out of the game.

Mobilize your checkers
If you can not obtain any of this goals with your current roll make sure to mobilize your stones in a way so you have a good chance to do so in the next move. You may not be able to build a new point with each turn - well must of the time you will not be able to do so - but set up your checkers so you can easily do in later moves. Do not move your checkers from one point to the next safe point whenever possible because then you will never create new points. It is essential to leave single checkers either to move another checker there to make a point or to have more possiblities to build another point.

Next post will be about the best opening moves for all possible rolls.

Checkers solved

2007-09-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

In case you have not heard it by now: Checkers is solved. A perfect play of both sides will always lead to a draw. Checkers is the most complex game at the moment that is solved. Have a look at Chinook for a detailed description of the project. It took them 24 years to calculate all 5 * 10^20 possibilities in a legal game.

So checkers solved, chess dominated by computers and backgammon as well. If you are looking for a game where computers do not stand a chance against a decent human you should head straight to Go. There are 4.7 * 10^170 positions possible in Go whereas chess "only" has 10^43. And because computers are still calculating each and every move - more or less - they got to much to do. Humans just have a better "feeling" for a situation - if trained well.

Well i guess in another 30 years or even less chess will be solved as well. And maybe someday Go might fall - but by this time we will all be living inside the matrix anyway.

backgammon – the rules

2007-08-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Below is the hardest part of the backgammon rules – at least to me. The starting position:

Backgammon is one of those games you can learn within a couple of minutes but need a lifetime to master. But no matter how good – or bad - you are it is a very addictive game.

Each player has 15 checkers and two dice. The object is to run around the board with all checkers and “bear off” – move them off the board. The player who first removes all his stones wins.
After the board is set up each player rolls one dice. The higher roll starts the game – roll again after a draw. This first roll is also used for the first move. The starting player uses his roll and his opponent roll to move his checkers – later each player rolls both of his dice.

The numbers on both dice can be split to move two checkers or the whole roll can be used on one checker - to use the combined roll two moves using the different numbers must be possible. It is just like making two moves with the same checker. In backgammon like chess each player has to move – even if he does not like to. He has to use his whole roll if there is a legal move to do so.
Throwing the same number with both dice is called a double. Allowing to move this number not only twice but four times.

The red stones – in the above example – run from the lower right to the upper right – their home board. The black stones move in the opposite direction to their home board on the lower right.

A single checker – also called blot – can be hit by the enemy by moving to the same field. When a stone is hit it returns to the bar in the middle of the board. If a player has a checker on the bar his first play after rolling the dice must be to return the checker into the game – according to his dice he has to enter into the enemies home board (black onto the fields 1-6 and red onto the fields 19-24 [see picture above]). If he can not legally enter the checker back into the game his move is forfeit and his turn is over. After entering the board he can use the rest of his roll how he wants to.

As soon as a field is occupied by two or more checkers – called a point – the opposite player can not move to this field. It is blocked. Several points in a row are a prime. As soon as a player build a 6 point prime or full prime – 6 points in a row – the other player can not cross this barrier because the highest number on a dice is the 6. So there is no legal move to jump over these points – until the other player has to move his checkers again. If a player has build a full prime in his home board – a closed board - and the other player has a checker on the bar he does not even have to roll a dice because he will not be able to make a legal move.

As soon as a player has all his checkers inside his home board he can start to bear off. If his numbers on the dice are higher then any legal move on the board he can use it to bear off the checkers most far away.

Example:
Red has two checkers on the 5-point and one each on the 3-point and 2-point. He rolls 6 and 3. He can use the 3 to bear off the checker on the 3-point and the 6 to remove his checker currently on the 5-point.

The player bearing off all of his checkers wins. If his opponent did get at least one checker of the board himself it is called a single gammon – worth one point. If that is not the case he wins a gammon or double game – worth two points. It is called a backgammon or triple game – worth 3 points; surprise – if your opponent has still a checker on the bar or your home board.

Now get GNU backgammon and start a game...

poker is fun - no it is not

2007-08-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

well i have to make another post about poker. just to show you want a perfect week party poker gave me.

the graph is made by PokerEV (a software that displays your luck - well it shows how much money you won and how much you should have won statistically aka in the long run). the red line shows how much money i should have made...it shows a small but decent plus. the blue line is the winnings whenever i got to a showdown and the green line shows my actual winnings or to be correct my losings in the last few days :(
and is you can see by the large gap between the lines i am running bad as hell.
sorry for writing a "poker blog" post but i just needed to tell everyone how unlucky i am.

get your personal chess trainer

2007-08-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

Well the best way to learn and master chess is to have your own personal trainer like an IM or even a GM. Another good option is to use a program called personal chess trainer. It offers hundreds and thousands of exercises within 3 different categories (tactics, endgames and strategy). After a couple of exercises there is a repetition to check and deepen what you have learned. It really helps to train your ability to identify certain patterns on the board and how to exploit these situations.
The free trial of the software lets you exercise 5 units of each category. You should really give it a try and see how it helps your chess.

queens in trouble - an interesting poker hand

2007-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

I found the following hand on the internet and i think it is a really interesting. There is no additional information on the other players involved. Well they all limped in so i guess there are not really playing a TAG (tight aggressive) style.

Preflop: Hero is Button with Q, Q.

UTG calls, 2 folds, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO checks, Hero raises, 2 folds, UTG calls, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO calls.

Flop: (11.40 SB) T , J , Q (5 players)

Now that is a good flop – dangerous but good. Right now we got top set – a very strong hand – only 3 hands are beating us right now (AK, K9, 98). AK would have raised before the flop. So K9 and 98 are the only hands we have to fear. And even against these straights we have a couple of outs (cards that would give us the better hand) because we can still make a full house. Pokerstove - a program to calculate your chance to win a hand – says QQ is a 53% favorite to take the pot (assuming all opponents are limping with the top 30% of their hands and raising 10%). I think that range is pretty good for these enemies. Actually i think they will limp even more – given us a better chance to win.

UTG bets, MP2 calls, MP3 folds, CO calls, Hero raises, UTG calls, MP2 calls, CO calls.

The first player bets and everyone else calls. We have to raise here. Most likely the set is the best hand and we have to charge all players drawing for a flush or a straight. Maybe UTG has us beaten right now but we have outs and let the others pay if they are still drawing. Once again the queens have a 53% chance to win this hand. As soon as our chance is bigger than 20% (because there are 5 players) it wins money in the long run to put more chips into the middle.

Turn: (9.70 BB) 8 (4 players)

The 8 is a bad card for our queens. Now every 9 makes a straight already. Pokerstove still shows 32% to take the pot. We are still a favorite against the range of our opponents.

UTG checks, MP2 checks, CO bets, Hero....

Now we have to make a tough decision. The player in the cut-off wakes up and bets into us. We have to assume that the 8 helped him – he made the straight. If we believe he has the 9 and the range for all other players stays the same our chance to win drops to 20%. So that is really on the edge. I would love to raise and kick out the flush draws. But raising would give the following players still the needed odds to draw because they have to pay 2 BB for a pot of 12.7 BB and there are 9 cards of the remaining 46 cards giving them the flush. So raising will build a bigger pot for the guy with the straight and knocking out other draws or made hands would reduce the equity of our hand. Reducing the amount of players while building the pot with just a 20% chance to win will lose money in the long run. So calling is right. Remember we still have a draw ourselves to win the hand. And flat calling will invite others to call. So maybe some two pairs will stay in and give us additional money if we hit our full house - besides the flush draws.

Hero calls, UTG calls, MP2 calls.

River: (13.70 BB) A (4 players)

UTG bets, MP2 calls, CO calls, Hero folds.

The ace of hearts is maybe the worst river card we could expect. We did not improve our set to a full house. And in addition now every king makes a straight and the flush draw hit. Now the player first to act bets into the whole field. He really has to have a hand. I would say he was drawing for a flush and finally made it. He bet out on the flop with his flush draw to build a big pot. He called the turn so most likely he did not have a straight then. Well even if he did not complete a flush he is telling the table that he has a strong hand and there are two callers in front of us. There are to many ways we are beaten so we just fold our lovely three ladies.

If you think that the analysis is wrong and you would play the hand different feel free to leave a comment.

pirates of the gold coast

2007-07-28T10:06:00.001-07:00

Let me tell you how i discovered game theory. I read a riddle about five pirates – intelligent pirates – who want to split a treasure. I don’t want to present you with fancy formulas and mathematical explanations. Just try to solve the riddle yourself and enjoy the surprising solution. So here is the riddle:

Five pirates got their hand on 500 gold coins. Now they want to devide the treasure. But because they are intelligent pirates – like a sober captain sparrow - and not the stereotype pirates who would just betray and kill until there is only a last one standing. One after the other will make a suggestion how to split the coins among the pirates. If a suggestion doesn’t get at least half the votes it is declined and the pirate making the suggestion is killed by the others. If the suggestion gets half the votes - or more - it is accepted and the gold is split. The pirate making the suggestion can also vote. So if the first suggestions is not accepted – and the pirate killed - the second pirate only needs to persuade one companion to have the gold split the way he wants it to. So what is the accepted suggestion ? Each pirates wants to make as much as possible - of course - without dying - surprise, surprise.
I will post the solution and explanation as a comment within a couple of days.

hi! who am i ?

2007-07-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

welcome to the home of the gameterrorist....and no worries i am calm as a bomb. just kidding. i just find it hard to spell theorist ;-)
i’m not a game theorist neither but i am really enjoying game theory problems and their often surprising solutions. these methods help to improve your play.
and that’s what’s this blog is all about....games, games, games and games
board games, card games, pc games

i am starting to learn backgammon and just received “backgammon for winners” by bill robertie. hoping this book will help to improve my game...
also i play a lot of poker...but this will not turn into a poker blog....maybe i’ll post some results every once in a while...but i think most are not interested in the life of a small limit grinder.
and last but not least i play chess....don’t play a lot lately. only the regular league games. for those who care my DWZ (german rating) is 1571. my highest rating was 1628. really have to play and study more. my goal is still to reach 1700.

besides those games i enjoy every single pc game out there....well of course not all of them...but really to much to mention all.