MAKEBEAROFF(6)

💖 MAKEBEAROFF 💖

okay so bestie, this is makebearoff from the Games Manual section (6), and she is literally the girl who builds your GNU Backgammon bearoff databases. no cap. 🎲✨

---

✨ NAME ✨

makebearoff — generate a GNU Backgammon bearoff database 🧚

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

makebearoff [-HCcgnh] -f filename [-t PxC] [-o P] [-s cache-size] [-O
filename]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So makebearoff generates GNU Backgammon bearoff databases, which are the whole reason your endgame play stops being embarrassing. 💅

She can make either:

• two-sided (exact) databases — these tell you precisely the chance of winning, like, exact-exact
• one-sided (approximate) databases — these hand you a variety of probabilities, looking at each side independently

⚠️ real talk: bearoff databases can get quite large and can take a significant amount of time to generate when you've got large numbers of chequers and/or points. she's a big girl and she takes a while. 😭

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -f filename, --outfile filename — write the bearoff database to filename. this option must be given, like it is not optional bestie, she needs to know where to put the thing.
• -t PxC, --two-sided PxC — generate a two-sided bearoff database for P points and C chequers for each player. 🫶 be warned tho: the size of the database grows rapidly with larger numbers of points and chequers. it's giving exponential.
• -o P, --one-sided P — generate a one-sided bearoff database for P points. one-sided bearoff databases are always generated for up to fifteen chequers. always. periodt.
• -s N, --xhash-size N — use a memory cache of size N while building the database. if the cache is smaller than the database size, database generation will be slower due to disk writes. so like, size it right or suffer. 💀
• -O filename, --old-bearoff filename — reuse an already generated bearoff database. any needed data already in this database will just be copied without regenerating it. recycling! iconic! ♻️
• -H, --no-header — do not write the normal bearoff database header. she's going headerless, no biggie.
• -C, --no-cubeful — do not calculate cubeful equities for two-sided databases.
• -c, --no-compress — do not compress one-sided databases. file go big 📈
• -g, --no-gammons — do not include gammon distributions in one-sided databases.
• -n, --normal-dist — rather than storing exact probabilities, approximate probabilities in a one-sided database with a normal distribution. it's giving bell curve 🔔
• -h, --help — display usage and exit. the classic. the helpful one. we love her.

---

💜 EXAMPLES 💜

to generate a two-sided database for up to eight chequers on six points:

makebearoff -t 6x8 -f gnubg_ts.bd

📝 note that this database is 72MB in size. yeah. seventy-two megabytes.

to generate a one-sided database for up to fifteen chequers on ten points:

makebearoff -o 10 -f gnubg_os.bd

📝 note that this database is 118MB in size. a hundred and eighteen. she's THICC.

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gnubg(6), bearoffdump(6) — go read those too, they're part of the lore. iykyk ✨

---

🎀 AUTHORS 🎀

Joseph Heled, Øystein Johansen, Jørn Thyssen, and Gary Wong, with the assistance of many others <bug-gnubg@gnu.org>. 🫶

this manual page was written by Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). it may be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation (the same license as GNU Backgammon). 📜

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! source/version vibes: this is the 2024-02-27 edition of the MAKEBEAROFF(6) page, so go forth and generate those databases responsibly. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶😭🔥👑🌈⭐💀🙈🍓🧚💜