Some musings:
What happens if we LOSE this game? What happens if we WIN? A draw??
If a team of top players, working together in consultation, STILL loses to Twixtbot, then besides being DEPRESSED, I believe that folks are going to feel this way: there is no point in ever playing Twixtbot; it is too damn strong. Twixtbot should stay completely out of all tournaments and rated play. I will go further, in MY viewpoint, that Twixtbot can't even be used as a tool for learning an analysis; no human being can preview 50,000 games per moves and tabulate the results, so it will not be possible for human play to model itself after Twixtbot 'type' moves. This will point to BonyJordan basically giving up and retiring Twixtbot permanently, unless he just wants to keep his server attached for the odd practice game (or new player) that might occur. He set himself a task years ago - create software capable of defeating all the best players at Twixt; after many years, the goal has been reached. Bye! Kind of a shame, though, and I batted around a few suggestions in another Forum thread, which I'll add to here:
a) bring back Twixtbot jr., who may suck, but is still a useful practice tool, IMO. Of course, I don't know the particulars of BonyJordan's hardware, and whether it is practical to keep both programs active on his computer.
b) expand the Twixtbot to include levels of play; you can weaken it by allowing the trials to vary from 50,000 down to, if need be, zero. Could TB still play an intelligent game with NO trials, based on the existing neural net, or won't that work at all? It doesn't HAVE to be zero; it could be, for example, 10,000, or 1000, etc. I also proposed randomly programming in 'mistakes'; cases where it plays 2nd-best or 3rd-best moves; the opponent won't know when this happens, so can prove to be a useful tool for training. Also, David proposed 'handicap' games, where the number of rows and columns changes to favor the human player, though personally I'm not a fan of changing the game this way.
c) add an analysis tool, where any specific position can be programmed into TB, and it will respond with a 'best move' and give sample lines.
d) create a portable Twixtbot that can be downloaded, plays off-line, or can be played on a cell phone (and, as I said, sell this).
These suggestions are to preserve the value of Twixtbot if we LOSE, and nobody ever wants to play it (and there already ARE a number of folks here who are of that mindset). Look, if the team loses and is simply determined to repeat the experiment and try again - well, I'm all for it, but perhaps next time with a different moderator, and maybe different rules for selecting the team move in place.
On the other hand, if we WIN, then HOORAY! Besides the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction which will be felt all around, I believe that it will change everyone's attitude about the Bot: it's play is EXTREMELY STRONG, but CAN BE DEFEATED by humans, playing the most accurate moves with care. In this case, I would expect that more people will be inspired to try on their own (and maybe succeed), and play against the Bot will increase with enthusiasm (though, still, probably it should stay out of the tournaments). In fact, we could see a big jump in the overall quality of human play in general! My above suggestions remain for the creator, but won't be as necessary - as Twixtbot will have plenty of use here for all.
And if a draw? Well, I think I'll leave this possibility alone, for now.
(meow)
Little Golem