FIBS Board backgammon forum

Hi!

I have updated Backgammon Studio with version 2.9. Is there room for more improvements? You bet!

Backgammon Studio 2.9

Improvements since 2.8:

• New actiontags:
  
  
  
  • No blots or not: No blots may look tempting and is sometimes right but sometimes a bit of risk is worth the potential gain.
    
  • Trade wins for gammons or not: Sometimes it is worth sacrificing some wins for more gammons.
    
  • Limit opponent gammons or not: Sometimes it is very expensive to lose a gammon so you may want to limit the opponent gammons as much as possible.
    
  • Leave ace anchor or not: Running off the anchor too early or waiting for too long can be a problem in these situations.
    
  • Fishing or not: Your opponent has a blot in the home board and you have an option to hit or not with a chance to fish for that second checker. Go fishing or not?
    
• New training tracks:
  
  
  
  • First! First move is usually straightforward but at some scores some surprises may lurk! Practice makes perfect!
    
  • Safe opening! Play completely safe (no blots) or be more flexible?
    
  • Last man standing! Opponent is bearing off and you have an ace anchor. Stay or run?
    
  • Gone fishing! Fishing for that second checker in your opponent board is tempting! Bite or not?
    
• Training tracks has been sped up considerably.
  
• You can rate positions you come across. This could conceivably used to something useful at some later point in time.
  
• New section: Matches with video commentaries. These matches/videos can be very interesting to play through.
  
• Blast from the past! 2001. All matches found for this year has been added to the database.
  
• Position forum has been turned into a more general forum with different sections.
  
• Video dialog overlay has been placed over the board (the dialog can't be moved on Mac/Safari for some reason).
  
• Direct access to training track highscores from the training track list.
  
• New section: Position type performance. You can check your performance in the different position types.
  
• Best MWC: New statistic on matches. Who had the best match winning chances during the match?
  
• You can now specify who is cubing in position search. Useful in connection with score-away search.
  
• You can now specify cube level in position search.
  
• You can now specify normal match score match type in search.
  
• You can now specify gammon chances in position search.
  
• Find player dialog is now also available in position search.
  
• New section: Win ratio. You can check if there is any connection between win ratio and PR.
  
• You can now compare the cube handling performance between two players. You can also check against your performance if you have a private database.
  
• New section: Tables & formulas. A section which displays some useful tables and formulas.
  
• +Some bugfixes.
  

Some images



Actiontags are fun!



..as they open up for new training tracks you can try your backgammon skills at.



Backgammon Studio has to rely on the equity error to determine if a position is difficult or not but there isn't always a direct correlation between these two.

Suggested by Nyo.



Some matches has videos where there are video commentaries. These can be especially interesting to play through to gain some further insights into the game. The audio isn't always 100% but usually it is fine. I haven't determined who the commenters were in all the videos but eventually I'll figure out who is commenting!



Position forum has been turned into a more general forum section with separate sections for different topics.

Suggested by Hall.



On Mac/Safari you can't move the video overlay for some reason so by default it is placed over the board.



There were an old highscore section which was pretty bad. Now there is a highscore link for each training track in the training track list.



A new section displays position type performance with total equity loss for each type. This can be useful in determining where most equity is lost. You may make the most errors in back games (they are pretty strange beasts!) but usually you don't get into those positions so often so focusing your efforts on improving your understanding of other position types might be more useful.

Suggested by negheonegu.



Who had the best match winning chances during a match? Something like this was mentioned during Nordic Open as a useful feature.



For score-away searches it can be useful to also specify who is cubing to locate certain positions.

Suggested by Tore.



You can now specify the current cube level when searching for positions.

Suggested by Tore.



There is now a new match type, normal match score which is defined as equal score with 5 or more points to go.

Suggested by Tore.



You can now specify gammon chances in position search.

Suggested by Tore.



Instead of using the player dropdown you can now search for players in this section too.



There is now a new section Win ratio where you can see an overview of PR and the number of wins for each PR range. It might not be terribly useful or meaningful so draw your own conclusions on the numbers you see here! You can also specify a minimum match length to exclude 1 or higher point matches.



It is now possible to compare the cube handling performance between two players. You can also save your cube handling performance in your private database and then compare it against players in the public database.



I have added a section with useful tables and formulas. I think there is room for a few more here.


In other news

Backgammon Studio userbase is growing and is approaching 700 users (2 to go..) but I am sure there are many more backgammon players who would love the server if they tried it. Spread the word!



The US has taken a clear lead here and will probably stay on top for quite some time but I am sure there is potential for other nations to catch up!

There are a couple of matches where all the playernames isn't known which isn't ideal:

Konrad Froeschl and X - Jacek Wojciechowski and Sebastian Wilkinson Monte Carlo WC 2015-08-06
Thomas Rønn and X - Jacek and Martin Birkhahn WBF Worldwide Trophy Tbilisi 2016 2016-05-01

If you know who were playing please let me know and I'll correct it!

http://www.backgammonstudio.com

Stay tuned...

Best regards,
TP