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16. June 2005, 20:41:21
playBunny 
Subject: Cheating
If your opponent agrees to the use of a program then it would be okay. "Cheating" should be defined as the (surreptitious) use of such programs with intent to create an unfair advantage. I can't see many players agreeing to the use of programs.

I made a post on the brainking.com board (Re: Backgammon Programs, 8. June 2005, 01:39:07) which included thoughts about cheating with a bg program. :
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The opportunity to cheat [with a bg program] is immediately obvious - you only need enter the current position and dice roll and ask for the moves. A successful cheat would not play an entire game according to what the machine said but would only use it to advise in tricky situations. In other situations it would be possible to pick the 2nd or 3rd moves, even 7th, etc, if they were not desperately worse than the best. This makes it somewhat difficult to detect a cheat.

In practice, however, if you examine the games of the top players at most sites, you will find that even the best will make bad moves and even huge blunders - as judged by the program. These programs are very exacting judges. The player will sometimes be able to argue why their move is good but more often it will be recognised that the move was indeed a poor one. This makes it somewhat easier, then, to detect a clumsy cheat. [That's in general, though. For Fencer to detect backgammon programs would be impossible as he would have to analyse everything. It takes several minutes per game and that's computer power which is not available - nor, if it were, would it be very productive use of his servers.]

Using a computer when playing against a robot is hardly cheating but when playing against other people it certainly is - unless there is disclosure and acceptance beforehand.

What about using the computer to analyse a move after it has been made? A main reason to do this is to maximise learning while that move is pertinent in the mind. The aim is to improve your play in future games by recognising the type of position and/or knowing how to act given a particular dice roll - building one's intuition or heuristics. But is it cheating, even if not as obvious as examining a move beforehand?

Well, it will have no effect on the game in some situations but in others it will. If you are attempting to trap a piece behind a prime and have been concentrating on adding a block at the front, but the bg analyser marks your move down because it reckons that you should have been trying to close the rear end first, then your next moves will be influenced as you change your plan. The computer's analysis has suggested a tactic in an ongoing situation - and therefore been of benefit even though used in retrospect.

On the other hand there are very many situations, especially at the start of the game where the volatility of the position means that tactics must be kept very fluid and every position examined as if the game were starting from there. In those situations the use of the computer would not be of much benefit in the current game.
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So, if you want to use your program, you should be aware that analysing the game after each move could still give you an advantage and this would be unfair if such usage is not disclosed. The best way to use a bg program is after the game has finished.

The same judgements could also be made if you use this board to get other people's opinions about a game while it is still in progress. Although this would be very visible to your opponent if they were a reader of the board, it could be seen as cheating.

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