[ View Thread ] [ Post Response ] [ Return to Index ] [ Read Prev Msg ] [ Read Next Msg ]

BGonline.org Forums

Great exposure for backgammon

Posted By: Bob Koca
Date: Friday, 10 May 2013, at 4:14 a.m.

In Response To: Great exposure for backgammon (Phil Simborg)

"I wish the author had said more about the amazing skill and study it takes to be a player of Falafel's level, and how the game is every bit as intellectual and challenging as Chess."

Thre was a bunch said along those lines:

Article had

"Casual players who believe that they are good persist in the illusion because the element of chance obscures their deficits. At its heart, backgammon’s cruelty resides in the dramatic volatility of the dice. Even a player who builds flawless structures on the board can lose to a novice. The good players simply win more often"

"Falafel took to spending fifteen hours a day online, playing backgammon, with the shades drawn, determined to master the game."

"Backgammon is far more mathematical than chess, but, while chess has a literature that dates back centuries, backgammon had no real theory until the nineteen-seventies, when gamblers at New York’s Mayfair Club began to take the game apart systematically. Chess players can visualize what the board might look like twenty moves ahead, but in backgammon the dice offer twenty-one random possibilities at each turn. The game must be encountered frame by frame. The players at the Mayfair drew up tables: If one checker is twelve slots from another, there are three ways to attack, and an eight-per-cent chance of doing so successfully. They rolled out positions, playing every permutation to identify the best move. Rollouts could take hundreds of hours. Players attempted to calculate, at each position, their game “equity”—the more the better. By shaving off any trace of error, they could hedge against the chaos of the dice. To the uninitiated, they undoubtedly seemed astoundingly lucky"

" Michihito Kageyama, a former McDonald’s employee from Japan who is now fourth on the Giants of Backgammon list, told me that he had created a database of ten thousand positions. He reviews thirty a day on his Kindle, as a morning exercise"

Messages In This Thread

 

Post Response
Your Name:
Your E-Mail Address:
Subject:
Message:

If necessary, enter your password below:

Password:
 

 

[ View Thread ] [ Post Response ] [ Return to Index ] [ Read Prev Msg ] [ Read Next Msg ]

BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.