{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Experiences in Evaluation with BKG - A Program that Plays Backgammon","authors":[{"name":"Hans J. Berliner","slug":"hans-j-berliner","given":"Hans J.","family":"Berliner","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"Because of very high branching factors, a backgammon program must rely on knowledge rather than search for performance. We here disc.uss insights gained about the s tructure of evaluation functions for a large domain s uch as backgammon. Evaluation began as a single linear polynomial of backgammon features . Later, we introduced s tat e-c lasses, each with its own evaluation function .. This · improved the play, but cau se.d problems with e dge-effects between state -c lasses. Our latest effort use s models of position potential to select across the set of best members of each represented sta te-class. This has produced a significant jump in performance of BKG. Because of the localization of knowledge, state-classes permit relatively easy modification of knowledge used in evaluati on ,. They also permit the building of opponent models ba se d upon what evidence shows the opponent knows in each state-class. Ou r program plays a generally competent game at an intermediate level of skill. It correctly solves a high percentage of intermediate level problems in books","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/98","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/0098.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/98.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/bibtex/98","volume":{"slug":"1977","title":"Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 1977","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/","year":1977,"location":"Cambridge, MA, USA","dates":"","editors":"Raj Reddy","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Problem-solving and Search","track":"Problem-solving and Search","number":98,"pages":{"first":428,"last":432},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}