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Review by Mike Main:
Every serious modern backgammon player knows about Snowie and
GNUBG – which is the best is an often debated matter. However
there is a third little known of option –
BgBlitz. It’s not quite
freeware as GNUBG is but it’s nowhere near the small fortune as
Snowie is. Instead it comes with a price tag that is such a modest
sum that suggests it might just be a waste of time. The first
lesson one must learn about BgBlitz is that it is the project of
one man who is brilliant in his field but his ability to market
his project is truly terrible. That man is Frank Berger.
The download is easy – this alone makes it preferable to GNUBG
which is the hardest download I and many others have ever come
across.
I’m personally not a fan of the facia of the boards. You get a
choice of 6 boards with the initial download and numerous others
as extra downloads if you want them. However being somebody who
just wants a fairly plain board none of them are my immediate
choice however the blackboard board (above) is probably suitable
to my level of play!
The program works well. The blackboard nearly fills my entire
screen which makes it nice and clear to view even if it makes me
worry if my eyes are becoming geriatrics. I must admit I have, in
testing it, built up a dislike of BGblitz because it repeatedly
beats me. That might not be a very subjective view in reviewing it
but I will concede that it means it knows what it’s doing. Maybe I
should follow its advice that is given in well laid out pop-up
windows but my lack of learning desire is another matter. Setting
it to tutor mode and entering my name as a player were far easier
processes than they are on the "programmer’s norm / user’s
nightmare to set up GNUBG" so in this respect BGBlitz is spot on.
My main use for a bg program is to be able to bung a position into
it, press some key or other to make it churn it over in its brain
and tell me what on earth I should, according to it, do and,
please, tell me in straight forward plain English and yes, let’s
have a few numbers to back itself up as well. BGBlitz achieves
this so it gets another thumbs up from me for this work.
If you're into having a mobile phone that does all sorts of other
things too then I gather that BgBlitz is the bees knees as a
mobile bg program - save all the positions you are unsure of and
run them though a computer later back at your base camp.
As to all the other functions that I know other “proper” players
want from a bg program I personally am not really interested in
all that – sorry, I learnt bg on a beach and a beach player is
what I am at heart - so I did the sensible thing and handed it all
over to one who knows and likes at that sort of stuff – Sean.
Will BgBlitz ever be considered as serious a bot as Snowie and
GNUBG? As long as the BgBlitz price tag remains as it is I think
not purely because it is a self-inflicted derisory sum of money to
ask for the product. But Snowie, following their Valentine’s Day
Massacre of their own product, are doing no further work on their
bot so it is, in the long term, in danger of going the same way as
Jellyfish and all dinosaurs. Meanwhile GNUBG needs a serious
campaign to make their product download friendly and their
development stutters along as their very good unpaid developers
find time to do things with the moose. Which leaves BGBlitz with a
gap in the market if Frank can find the time to ever complete his
self given task.
This all rather begs the question is to why bg bot programmers are
so strapped for cash. If bg is to advance we need to understand
our game better. So we need our boffins doing their stuff. Even
boffins need to eat and have somewhere dry to sit at their
computers. Time I think for the big boys of our industry to give a
little.
Paying $46 for the full pro version is a small price to pay and
well worth it, amongst other things, just to avoid the anguish of
a gnubg download angst attack.
Review by Sean
Williams:
I think that it has a number of strengths:
BGBlitz is excellent on the Xda. I cannot comment on other phones/pdas.
The match and position databases are a nice feature;
I like the match replay function;
I think there are a good selection of boards to choose from (you
can get more on the net);
Setting up positions is straight-forward;
Performing rollouts is uncomplicated;
The interface is intuitive and easy to use.
I think it lacks a number of features that other software has:
You cannot analyse entire games and matches;
BGBlitz will not give you an error rate;
The analysis and rollout features are not as customisable as in
other products;
Not as much theory is available (temperature maps, comprehensive
race counts etc.).
Overall I think that
BGBlitz is a very good product.
If gnubg didn't exist I would recommend it wholeheartedly.
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