The Gauntlet

The Gauntlet

Overview: The Gauntlet is progressively difficult backgammon challenge against a world-class backgammon program capable of analyzing your performance with a performance rating (PR) or an error rating (ER). The way you progress through this challenge is to win matches of increasing length while playing below a certain threshold (that tightens as you pass through difficulty tiers). For the purposes of this guide we will use Extreme Gammon as the program we will be playing and having analyze our performance, but if you have another bot (i.e. Snowie or GNU) that is capable of world-class analysis you can use that instead.

Rules: Each difficulty tier has 13 'levels', and these levels are matches that increase in point value. They start at 1 point and extend to 25 points: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25. To progress within a difficulty tier you have to both win the match and play below a certain threshold. That clears the level and progresses you onto the next level (a match that has increased its length by 2 points). The 'certain thresholds' that you have to play below will now be explained.

There are 9 difficulty tiers. We will call them 'dans', as they conveniently correlate to the professional ranking system that Go masters have adopted (which, in turn, was adopted from Japanese martial arts). Each difficulty tier mandates that you play below a certain threshold. The difficulty tiers are as follows:

1 dan: <4 PR
2 dan: <3.5 PR
3 dan: <3 PR
4 dan: <2.5 PR
5 dan: <2 PR
6 dan: <1.5 PR
7 dan: <1 PR
8 dan: <0.5 PR
9 dan: = 0.00 PR (or rounds down to this)

Once you complete all the levels in a difficulty tier, you move on to the next tier where the performance requirements get much more strict, until you land upon the final tier which means you must not deviate from the bot at all (or in such a slight manner that it rounds down to 0.00 PR - this is indeed possible).

Mode and Analysis: As previously mentioned we are using Extreme Gammon for the purposes of this guide. You will be playing on the strongest settings your computer can comfortably allow. This will either be XG Roller+ or XG Roller++ and the analysis you will be using will be World Class or XG Roller++, respectively (the latter is a custom setting, you simply select XG Roller++ as the first pass). The mode you will be using is Iron Man mode. This is to prevent you from viewing 'hints' throughout the match, such as missed cubes and allowing you to view match equity tables. This also removes the pip count, but our goal is ultimately to challenge the player and this is the game mode that best serves that goal.

Progression: It is the nature of Iron Man mode to automatically update your 'playing profile' with the results of the game, with the purpose of making consequences unavoidable. However, this is irrelevant to progression within The Gauntlet. You can create a profile on Extreme Gammon out of convenience, as it will continually prompt you to make one if you don't, but it is no matter if you delete it if you are unsatisfied with your statistics. The goal of The Gauntlet is to simply progress through the levels and to make that progress official, all you have to do is keep a record of your level clears. On your computer, you will create a folder dedicated to The Gauntlet and within that folder you will have the division of difficulty tiers (if applicable, it's unnecessary if you haven't completed the first tier). Every time you clear a level you save the match file and drop it into the (applicable) folder, perhaps tagging your PR onto the match file to make it easier for organizational purposes. If you outperform your difficulty tier (say you are on the first tier and complete a level with a 2.2 PR), this is actually rewarded! Since this qualifies as a 4 dan clear, you can use it when you get to that difficulty tier so long as you are able to produce another clear that can properly replace it in the folder you are taking the match file from. All that matters is that the level clears in the respective difficulty tier folder are below the required threshold. Excellent performance in earlier tiers therefore pays off later on in The Gauntlet when the performance threshold is difficult to meet. So always play at your best!

Hardcore Mode: For truly elite players, they can try The Gauntlet challenge with permadeath enabled. This means that you would be completing a difficulty tier in one 'run', one match after the next, with that run being terminated if you die (that is to lose the match and play above the threshold). You progress as you would in the normal variant of The Gauntlet, but if you win the match (but play above the PR threshold), or lose the match (but meet the PR threshold), you remain on the level you were trying to beat and have to repeat it until you clear it. If you die and the run gets terminated, you have to start over from the first level. This is so incredibly difficult that it would appeal to only the best players, and that's not even considering difficulty tiers beyond the first. Those exist out of necessity, but we eventually approach the limits of human capability (I would say that limit is probably at 5 dan, where only super grandmasters could complete it after dedicating thousands of hours to it). So even at the first difficulty tier, this is truly a hardcore challenge which anyone can be proud of completing. You have been warned of its unbelievable difficulty!

Endless Mode: As above, but all runs start on the first tier and continue into further tiers as part of the same run (essentially being endless). I guess this would appeal to players who want to see how far they can get, but we run into the problem I described above where it eventually just becomes humanly impossible. To me this endeavor seems ridiculous but maybe there are some players who think it would be fun.

So there you have it! Enjoy the pinnacle of both difficulty and luck that backgammon has to offer. If you enjoy the grind, this will keep you entertained for the rest of your life because you can never truly 'beat it'. Even if you somehow beat 9 dan in normal mode, you still won't be able to even touch higher difficulty tiers in hardcore mode. But you are welcome to try! If you have any questions, let me hear them on Discord (my username there is _hatcher_).

-Hatcher