Binomial Checkers

[MostFamousDane]

Hello Checker Friends I am proud to announce the release of Binomial Checkers. Binomial Checkers is an advanced program that helps you organize and analyze your tournament games, prepare for tournaments and improve your play.

Key Features:

Extensive database capabilities including support for named variants
Opening book build on published play with dynamic cross references
Tournament archive with instant lookup
Puzzle library
12 piece endgame database

Works on Windows, Mac, Linux etc
Doesn't require internet connection or activation

The program can be purchased at https://binomialsoftware.com

[chipschap]

A 12 piece endgame database? This would be a giant advance if it is so. It would also be very large.

You don't mean 10 piece, such as Ed Gilbert has provided?

[MostFamousDane]

No its 12 piece database.

The ultimate version comes with the complete 12 piece database and it fills almost 3 TB
The pro version only has the part with max 1 king per side it doesn't fill much more than 10 db.

Sune

[Bill Salot]

Is "Binomial" ready to challenge "KingsRow" to a match?

[MostFamousDane]

I have run a number of matches against Kingsrow and Binomial wins more than it loses. The importance of engine strength is highly overrated in my opinion - who actually plays against an engine anymore ?. Its more about how usefullness the overall package is. You typically run kingsrow in checkerboard which have very limited features. Binomial Checkers is closer to something like ChessBase in features.

[ZoeZap]

Is there a trial version planned? Interested to see how it compares to CheckerPlayer.

[MostFamousDane]

I am planning to make a demonstration video to convince the few people who haven't ordered yet

[chipschap]

At 300 Euro I expect there will be a big rush of orders

[johndraughts]

CheckerPlayer and Aurora already are great database programs but this 12 piece database is interesting. I think we need an official match, Binomial vs Kingsrow or Cake. 300 Euro though, I would buy it if its 100 euro

[MostFamousDane]

Regarding the price you have to remember that the database fills a lot so there is cost involved with the installation media also VAT, shipping, payment processing, hosting etc.

Also when you consider the computing power necessary to compute the database, there is pretty much no way that I can even recover the electricity cost of having 8-10 powerful computers running for 12 years. In that light I don't think the price is too high.

[johndraughts]

that is ok, but I want to hear from Ed Gilbert and Martin. This new program needs to be put to the test

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Congratulations to Sune with such outstanding achievement!

Let’s hope someone find it useful.

For my day-to-day activities and needs I am completely satisfy with Kingsrow for 15 years. I can’t imagine situation when 12 pieces EDB help me more than 10, but 3 TB is a lot.

In addition- probably the biggest and most valuable Kingsrow asset for me is 2.5 million positions opening book which is much higher and level above accurate than any existing published play. I am using it to find and confirm new play.

No human books can replace its importance. For me opening book is as important or even more important than ending database.

[liam stephens]

Hi Sune,

Congratulations on being the first to produce a 12 piece Draughts Database, an amazing achievement - Well Done !

It's said a recent report from Wall Street mentions a surge in demand for 3T+ Hard Drives.

Regards - Liam.

[chipschap]

It's not for me to say what the "right" or "fair" price for the new program may be, and I can appreciate that there are many cost factors, especially international shipping. I didn't mean to say that 300 Euro is unfair, only that it will (perhaps greatly) reduce sales potential.

Several factors go into pricing decisions. Cost of production, cost of distribution, cost of labor ... etc. On the buyer's side, perceived value and affordability. Perceived value seems to be, from the comments here, yet to be settled, although certainly a 12 piece database is a huge step forward. Affordability may be the big issue. I think elasticity of demand for checker programs is pretty high, especially given the free world-class alternatives.

I hope Sune has much luck with his endeavor. It's clear he's put in tremendous effort and we should all be glad to see checkers move forward. But Binomail Checkers isn't going to be in everyone's price range.

[MostFamousDane]

For my day-to-day activities and needs I am completely satisfy with Kingsrow for 15 years. I can’t imagine situation when 12 pieces EDB help me more than 10, but 3 TB is a lot.

You can always get the pro version it has the complete 10 piece db and the most useful part of the 12 db and it doesn't use much more space than the kingsrow database.

In addition- probably the biggest and most valuable Kingsrow asset for me is 2.5 million positions opening book which is much higher and level above accurate than any existing published play. I am using it to find and confirm new play.

No human books can replace its importance. For me opening book is as important or even more important than ending database.

For binomial checkers I have taken 15 popular opening books merged them together to form a collective opening book. Then I have run matches against kingsrow and other computer programs for 10-15 years and manually corrected the opening book when there was a mistake. To supplement this I have made my own opening book to fill out the "holes" left by regular published play.

There are several advantages to this.

Fistly it preserves history as you can look up a position and see which book (and which game/variant) the position appeared in.

Secondly the opening book forms a theory of the game since you can see whether the position is drawn, won or lost as opposed to some arbitrary values like -2, -20, -80. This gives the program reliable variance since the program can choose between any of the drawn moves. Using programs like kingsrow or cake that have generated the opening book you cant see whether it is safe to choose a move other than the highest evaluated (and sometimes that isn't safe either). In some situations a -3 leads to a lost position while a -80 might still be drawn.

So overall I believe my opening book to be of superior use. Strength wise most of Binomial Checkers strength comes from it superior opening book somewhat similar to the fact that nexus/nemesis was the strongest program for years. Search wise kingsrow is much much better but there I have my 12 piece db to save me .

I'm still planning on making a video demonstrating the many many advanced features of the program. For instance it also has a puzzle mode where I have a library of almost 4000 puzzles that you can solve.

Lastly: You are allowed to use more than one program.