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The Chaos of the Dice -- A Backgammon Hustler's Quest to Gain an Edge

Posted By: Nick Kravitz
Date: Tuesday, 14 May 2013, at 4:16 p.m.

In Response To: The Chaos of the Dice -- A Backgammon Hustler's Quest to Gain an Edge (Bill Riles)

I found a number of errors in the article below. However, a nice article; I remember Falafel back in the early 1990s in Washington Square park. He used to spot the bone ("Kamsky" in those days) double-sixes once per game. I was but a fish, but could still beat him now and again at either game.

"Unlike chess, backgammon is tactile, fast-moving, even load, with checkers slammed down." Not true; speed chess is commonly played this way too, and often more so. In fact, backgammon checkers are only slammed down when they are moved to the bar, while chess pieces can always be slammed down whether they are capturing or not.

"He kibitzed and tried to hustle opponents into playing "positions" -arrangements on the board that contain a hidden advantage." Correct terminology is "proposition play" or "prop" for short.

"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." Misleading statement. Maybe in rare ending situations chess players can look 20 moves ahead. Middle game positions have an average of 40 possible moves per side (more possibilities than backgammon) resulting in 2.5 million positions after only 2 moves! Even most world class players only calculate 4 to 8 moves ahead in most positions.

"By shaving off any trace of error, they could hedge again the chaos of the dice." Poor terminology and misleading. A "hedge" implies that you can take an offsetting bet or position that reduces variance, often at the expense of giving up expected value. Blackjack has an "insurance" bet for this exact purpose. There is no such hedging option in backgammon, unless you count settling prior to a game concluding, which is not really part of the game or required by either side.

"An engineer at IBM figured out how to apply neural-network computing to the game. The laborious rollouts were no longer necessary." Not true. Rollouts are no longer laborious given modern compute times; they are also still commonly used to calculate more precise equities and cube decisions. Later the author writes "The stakes were set at fifty dollars. The position was entered into the computer, and players crowded around the screen." I assure the author this bet was settled using rollout analysis.

Nick

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