Beating the bot at domino will not happen in one evening, but the better you understand how it thinks, the sooner you start winning. On tamashebi.cc the practice bot lives in domino: when you create a table you choose “play the bot” and a difficulty, and the match starts at once — even as a guest. Bura has bots too: the host of a free casual table can fill empty seats with them to practise. In nardi and Joker the bot has a different job. It does not replace a live opponent; it only takes over a human’s seat when that player has left the table or run out of time on a move. This article starts with the domino bot and then covers what you should know about the bot in nardi and Joker.
The difficulty levels
- Easy — almost random. If it has a scoring move, it takes one six times out of ten; the rest of the time it plays any legal tile.
- Normal — rates every legal move: how many points it scores right now, how heavy the tile is, whether it is a double, how many points it leaves open for you, and how flexible its own hand stays. It plays the best rating.
- Hard — starts from the same rating, then plays the hand out to the end many times in its head. Each time it splits the unseen tiles differently between your hand and the bazari (the boneyard), and it picks the move with the best average result. It spends roughly a tenth of a second on this per move.
All three levels share one thing: the bot sees exactly what a human in its seat would see. Your tiles and the order of the boneyard are unknown to it — the server gives it the same restricted view it gives your browser. It pauses briefly before each move, under a second, so the game runs at a human pace; the pause does not mean it is thinking harder. A game against the bot is always practice and never affects your rating.
You choose the difficulty when you create the table, along with the target — 75, 175, 255 or 355. If you do not choose a level, the bot plays at Normal. A bot match waits for nobody: the table starts at once and does not appear in the lobby. If bot practice is ever unavailable, that is the administration’s choice — the feature can be switched on and off in the site settings.
What the bot does well
- It does not leave points on the table. For the Normal and Hard bots, a multiple of five it can score right now is the heaviest argument there is.
- It gets rid of doubles early: they are hard to place later, and the bot knows it.
- It sheds heavy tiles early, so that a riba (a blocked board) or your “domino” does not catch it with lots of pips in hand.
- It tries not to leave you a multiple of five: it counts how many of the unseen tiles would score for you after its move.
- It never makes an illegal move and never forgets to draw.
Where the bot makes mistakes
- The Normal bot looks only one move ahead. A two-move combination where the first move scores nothing and the second scores big is invisible to it.
- The Hard bot splits the unseen tiles evenly between your hand and the boneyard. It does not conclude that if you went to the bazari you were missing a certain number — it learns nothing from your past moves.
- Its simulations play greedily for both sides: always the biggest immediate score, then the heaviest tile. It predicts badly a player who deliberately passes up points now for a bigger score later.
- The Hard bot only looks to the end of the current hand. The match score and the target — 75 or 355 — do not affect its choice.
Traps
The bot does not have the information about you that you have about it. In Georgian domino you only go to the bazari when you have no tile to play, so every draw the bot makes tells you which numbers it is missing. Use that.
Example
- The open ends show a three and a six. The bot draws three tiles from the bazari and only then plays 6-2.
- So before drawing it had neither a three nor a six. One of the three new tiles could be a three, but most likely it was the last tile drawn that gave it a move.
- Now the ends show a three and a two. You hold 2-3 and 3-5. Play 2-3 on the two, and both ends become threes — the bot will probably have to go back to the bazari.
- Every extra draw weighs its hand down: if the hand ends in a riba, or you play your last tile, you score more.
- By the same logic, do not open ends on a number the bot has just played — it very likely holds more of them.
The second trap is the Normal bot’s one-move horizon: leave it an end where a small score is visible right now if that opens a big multiple of five for you next. The third: near the end of the match the Hard bot does not consider how many points you still need, so in the last hands you can play more carefully while it keeps chasing the most it can get from the hand.
The bot in nardi and Joker
Nardi and Joker have no separate game against the bot — your opponent there is always a live person. The bot steps in when a player runs out of time on a move (it then plays that one move for them) or when a player leaves a Classic Joker table and a bot takes the seat. The nardi bot, for example, only makes legal moves and weighs the position: the risk of being hit, the points it has made, an opponent’s checker on the bar. The Joker bot gets the same restricted view as a player and cannot see anyone else’s cards. We have a separate article on practising nardi.
A training plan
- Start at Normal, to 75 points. The Easy bot is too random to teach you anything.
- In every hand, track which numbers the bot is missing from its draws. The habit works against live opponents too.
- When you win four out of five against Normal, move to Hard and 175 points.
- Against Hard, watch for the riba: it sheds heavy tiles early, so in a riba the hand totals often favour it.
- Then play live opponents: a person counts less precisely than the bot, but learns your habits.
One more tip on top: after every match, recall one hand you lost and ask where you could have played differently. The bot never gets annoyed and never tires, so you can replay the same situation as often as you like. That is its main value: against a live opponent a mistake costs rating or coins, against the bot it costs only a few minutes.
Frequently asked questions
- Can the bot see my tiles?
- No. The bot gets the same restricted view as a player: only its own tiles and the board. Your hand and the order of the boneyard are unknown to it.
- Can I play nardi or Joker against the bot?
- Not at the moment. The practice bot is in domino, and in Bura the host of a free table can fill empty seats with bots. In nardi and Joker the bot only plays for a player whose time ran out or who left the table.
- Does beating the bot change my rating?
- No. Every match against the bot is practice and has no effect on your rating.
Every game on tamashebi.cc is free to play. Domino Coin is a virtual in-game coin: it is never money, cannot be bought or cashed out, and means nothing outside the site. The site is available in Georgian, English, Russian and Turkish.
The games on Tamashebi.cc are played in a Georgian-language interface. They are free and use a virtual coin, never real money.