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A story

Posted By: Matt Cohn-Geier
Date: Thursday, 10 October 2013, at 9:32 p.m.

In Response To: Backgammon's popularity - a call to the ABT and USBGF (Rod)

Let me share a story with you.

Back when I was a young intermediate, I had no idea about how to play backgammon well. I didn't really know anything about the backgammon culture that existed in the 60s, 70s, and 80s anyway. Most of that happened before I was born. I read books, and I had a copy of GNU (XG hadn't been released yet) and I understood that GNU was pretty strong most of the time and vaguely understood what error rates were, but I couldn't really tell a 5 from a 7. I didn't know the difference between any of the Open division players who came to the tournament.

What I did know was that I enjoyed backgammon, and I liked playing, studying, seeing different positions, talking with people who were better or more experienced than I was, seeing how their thought processes worked. I hadn't become jaded yet.

So, when we had a local tournament in my local city, I was eager to go, and to seek out the company of other people who were serious backgammon players. I didn't know anything about the history of tournaments or expect it to be bigger or whatever. I just wanted to have a good time and play and see some backgammon.

As it got down to the finals, I had been eliminated, but I still wanted to see some backgammon. So I offered to record the finals match between Steve Sax and Petko. They agreed and I recorded the match, and then I kept it in my personal backgammon library and studied it. I wasn't trying to "expose" anyone or go to war over people's privacy. I just wanted to see how good people played and thought about positions. Yes, I could just watch GNU play against itself, but GNU wouldn't say anything to me about how to think about positions. By looking at where their choices differed from GNU and asking myself, "why would he have made this play?" I began to understand the basics of how people think about positions. But mostly, I just wanted to see some backgammon.

These days I've seen it all and I don't really care much about looking at people's matches. But back when I was an intermediate I just wanted to digest whatever I could get my hands on.

Take that for what you will.

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