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8.2 Entering live tournament matches

It's possible to enter match transcriptions into GNU Backgammon. It's not very difficult. Presuming you're using the GUI, do this:

  1. Start a match of any length, pressing the New button, and select Human-Human and manual dice.
  2. To select the opening roll, click on the right dice pair in the dice selection window that appears. The left die in the dice pair is the die that's rolled by player 0, or the player at the top. The right die is the die that will be rolled by player 1 or the bottom player. So if you select for example the 53 dice combination it means that player 0 rolls a 5 and player 1 rolls a 3, and player 0 is therefore beginning this game. However, if you select the 35 dice combination it means that player 0 rolls a 3 and player 1 rolls a 5. Player 1 will therefore begin when you select 53 instead of 35.
  3. To change the names, use the Edit button at the top. If you want to enter information such as the name of the Annotator, date, locale, etc. go to the Game menu and choose Match Information.
  4. To enter written comments, you first have to play the move, and then go back to the move in the move list to be able to use the Commentary pane (feel free to close the Messages pane from the Windows menu). Don't forget to save the match every once in a while.
  5. One comment: when entering the Cube commentary of a cube play (meaning it was turned), select the Take/Pass decision to enter the commentary. The reason is that if you export it after, and didn't do this, the commentary appears before the cube decision and not after as it should.

Tip: while entering the match, if you wish to see GNU Backgammon's opinion while you are entering the moves, play the move on the board and press the Hint button in the tool bar. In the latest builds, if you have done this, the results will then be placed with the move so that it means it is already analyzed when you run the full match analysis. Mind you, it will preserve the information even if you ran a deeper 3-ply or 4-ply from the Hint window. After playing the move and confirming the dice, go back in the move list and click on the move, and you'll see the analysis appear in the Analysis pane as it should.