From what I read about the bots, I could sum it like that:

- JellyFish: popularity has faded compared to GnuBG and Snowie;
- GnuBG: stays popular because it's free;
- Snowie: strongest bot (version 4), costly but apparently it's worth it.

Now I've just heard of eXtreme Gammon: it looks promising and the price (49 $US + tx) is affordable compared to Snowie.

Any thoughts on that new bot? Someone has tried it?

Jelly: First strong commercial bot. No analysis capabilities. Development stopped many years ago.
GNUBg: Strongest bot today. Interface not as good (simple/intuitive) as Snowies.
Snowie: Really strong. Have been the standard for many years but development stopped and GNUBg is much better at doing rollouts and utilizing the new CPUs computational power.
eXtreme Gammon: Never heard about it.

Is there a version of GNU BG for Mac that isn't super buggy? I tried it a while back and it randomly crashed within the first few moves almost always.

Jellyfish: Obsolete & ancient, essentially worthless.

Snowie: Heading down the same path as Jellyfish but it remains the standard because people like it. Possibly may be as strong as GNU for money play.

GNU BG: A better program all around than Snowie in spite of costing $400 less. Unfamiliar people find the interface difficult, I guess. Carries a host of features that Snowie doesn't. My well-educated guess is that GNU is very much stronger than any other bot in match play, and probably comparable to Snowie in money play.

eXtreme: Unknown. Possibly comparable to GNU & Snowie. The interface is somewhere in between the two. Rollouts seem faster than even GNU. Still unsure whether GNU or Snowie is stronger than eXtreme or not. Match play possibly not as good as GNU's.

BGBlitz: Strong neural net, possibly stronger than the other bots, but not enough of features/interface to be a serious contender.

what are people basing their claims of gnu >snowie 4 on?

edit: skillwise

Better MET, CPAtS (checker play at score), had a lower ER on the 626 Depreli positions, and I believe GNU beat Snowie in a Dueller session.

Or you can just take my word that I'm pretty damn good and have played enough against the bots to know that GNU is significantly stronger than Snowie in matches. I am not sure which is better for money play, but if I had to bet, my money would be on GNU.

There has been some XG discusion over at BGonline. Here is a bot comparison table.

Just downloaded XG and will give it a go.

Could you give us some feedback after you tried it, kerr?
Also, I searched the BG Online site, but couldn't find the specific discussion. Could you provide a link?

Thank you very much!

yet to install XBG, but here are some threads I found at bgonline

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbb...mes;read=42422

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbb...mes;read=42523

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbb...mes;read=42576

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbb...mes;read=42605

http://www.bgonline.org/forums/webbb...mes;read=43619

Thanks a lot kerr. I went through the first 3 links and it's very interesting. Since it's a new bot, it seems that there are some issues (features missing, etc.), but it will surely improve and mature I guess.

One thing for sure, it can't be all bad to have another bot on the market, it's gonna be good for competitive development between the different products, a little bit like Hold'em Manager and PokerTracker3 for Hold'em poker.

Bump because I downloaded the free 14 day trial. I like the interface and speed of XG vs. Gnubg.

I've been playing with eXtreme Gammon for the past week. My only other experience with BG programs has been with the free Jellyfish of many years ago. The eXtreme website has some benchmarks putting it on a par with Gnu and Snowie, but until someone other than the eXtreme folks publish something you have to take their numbers with a grain of salt.

On the whole I'm pretty pleased with eXtreme and will be buying it, but as posted above it was just released and there are some annoyances. For example, I can't figure out how to save certain options: I have to keep turning on "show pips" each time I start up. The date and time a game is played doesn't show up in the game list in a player profile, and so far as I can tell you can't sort played games by date. And I have no idea how to do rollouts.

I imported about 1000 matches I've played on FIBS, mostly 5pt matches, and like an idiot I had eXtreme do a "Thorough" analysis on both me and the opponents during import. It took about 30 hours. I don't know if that's reasonable or not.

It would be nice if someone familiar with Snowie and Gnu could try it out and write up a comparison.

Why don't you download the free Gnubg yourself and compare the analysis time ?

I said someone familiar with Snowie and Gnu. I'm not familiar with them. And I was talking about more than just comparing analysis times.

I thought the choice was obvious.

Are those legal to use against players?

Legality doesn't really enter into it. They're obviously unethical, but occasionally they get used anyway (online). They're quite easy to detect, so just stop playing if you think your opponent is using a bot.

That may be a dumb question, but how do you detect that?

A player who is using a bot to gain an advantage is keeping two games going at once. He's playing you in his online screen, and meanwhile he's keeping an identical position in a Snowie or GNU or XG screen. When you make a move in the real game, he makes the same move against Snowie and waits for it to respond, then makes Snowie's play against you.

The giveaway is that all this synchronizing requires a noticeable amount of time, so he'll make his forced moves (an obvious hit, for instance) in the same amount of time as his difficult moves. A real player takes longer on the difficult moves and makes the forced moves instantly. Once you notice this pattern, quit playing. (You can also analyze the games you played in Snowie and see if his error rate seems absurdly low. If so, don't play him again.)