About the Robots

Select the robot to play by clicking on select robot next to the start button.   For multiplayer games, if there are enough human players in the room, you can also select No Robot to start a game with only human players.

The robots are currently known as Dumbot Smartbot and BestBot.   Each game has its own family of robots, and some are better players than others, but generally Dumbot plays well enough to win against beginners, Smartbot in intended to play well enough to challenge intermediate skilll players, and Bestbot is the best available, challenging even for advanced players.   Some games may not have any robot, or may not have all three.

The robots are written in Java, and run on your machine rather than on the server. Consequently, if the robot seems too slow, my first suggestion is to buy a faster machine. I calibrate the robots' speed and playing ability so they will respond at least as fast as a typical human player.

Robot games are scored just like regular games, and each robot has a ranking for each game.    In ranked robot games the player to move first is random, and the games are remembered if you quit them. Consequenly you can always quit to join a human player, and come back to your robot game later, and also you can't get out of eventually finishing a robot game you are losing. The robots are happy to play unranked games and let you choose who will move first.

If your opponent quits a game before it is over, you can let the robot finish the game by clicking on the "actions" menu in the game room. In these games, the robot's win or loss is credited to the player who quit.

What is the Robot's Objective?

The robots' goal is to entertain and train the human players, not to be the best possible opponent. I'm generally only interested in improving robots that are too dumb to be interesting to play. In a few cases, I've deliberately made the robots play worse than they could. That's about all there is to say about 2-player perfect information games. For games with more than two players, or with hidden information, or with an element of chance, exactly what the robots are allowed to know, and what should be trying to do, is not so obvious. The first rule is, the robot plays to win, but if it isn't winning, or can't win, it plays to lose by the smallest margin. This may have the effect of dragging down the leader, or it may not. The robot definitely doesn't try to play for second.

What are the Robot's Extra Abilities?

Memory! The robots are allowed to be superhumanly good at remembering things. In games like Container, where the cash total is hidden, the robot is allowed to remember all your transactions and therefore how much cash you have. In games like Medina where the buildings you have available would be humanly impossible to remember, it remembers. The robot is definitely NOT allowed to know what the next roll of the dice, or the top card in the deck is. But it is allowed to be superhumanly good at remembering what cards are left in the deck, or what tiles are left in the bag.

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