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Backgammon is not chess!

Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Sunday, 10 March 2013, at 11:23 a.m.

In Response To: Backgammon is not chess! (Frank Berger)

First, I don't believe it is possible to put a luck to skill ratio on the game for three reasons:

1) We really never know exactly how much difference there is in the skill of the two players when the match starts. And we also don't know when the match end. It is not valid to say that if one player plays at a lower PR he played more skillfully even in that match. Why? Because each player was not tested with exactly the same decisions. One player may have been presented with far more complex checker plays and cube decisions that particular match. The only true way to measure the skill difference between two players would be to see the PR ratings over many thousands of matches of equal length, or for the two players to take an extensively long test of the same cube and checker decisions and compare the results.

2. We cannot truly measure luck. Yes, it is fairly accurate, in a match, to determine which player got more jokers or better rolls in terms of rolls that were above or below average, but we cannot measure which player had more difficult rolls or difficult cube decisions. Even if we assume that XG is 100 percent accurate in measuring luck (and we know that is not possible), XG does not account for the difficulty of the decision.

3. EVEN IF you make assumptions about skill difference and the luck factor, the ratio of skill to luck will change depending on the length of the match. How can you say if a player is 80% better luck will be 60/40 without specifying a length? If that number is true for a 9 point match, certainly the ratio will be much closer if the same two players played a 5 point match.

To me, there are only three things about the luck factor that I consider important:

1. The luck of the draw. 2. The luck of getting easy rolls and decisions compared to your opponent. 3. The luck of heredity. Choose your parents well! If you can inherit a high I.Q., money, good looks, and a lack of a history of mental and physical problems, and you are lucky enough to have loving parents living in a free country with great opportunities, then you are truly lucky. Luck in backgammon, in comparison, is too trivial to worry about.

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