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BGonline.org Forums
Backgammon should be modled completely like bridge
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: Backgammon should be modled completely like bridge (Bob Koca)
Date: Monday, 24 November 2014, at 3:21 a.m.
The original system (I am going off old memories as I haven't been active since the eighties) originated before Phil was born (yes, THAT long ago!), and awarded two tiers of points, black ones for club tournaments, and red for larger events. An LM needed 300 points, with some being red points. Later, gold points for really big events were added, and you needed some of those as well. By now points might be a bit like Kryptonite, with green, red, white, gold, rainbow ...
The colored points encouraged attendance at bigger events, and caused the LOL (Little Old Ladies) to pay pros to partner them, since if you were a pair of LOL when it came to winning gold points you were SOL.
With time inflation crept in. When I was playing in the eighties the annual points race winners were amassing upward of two or three thousand points. That award is named after Barry Crane, a movie producer who was the lifetime leader with the most annual wins at the time of his death. Ironically, Barry (who I faced once at Bridge Week in Pasadena) was dismissed by his peers while alive, because he was peerless at Match Point play, which most resembles match play in backgammon, while the players who garnered the most respect, excelled at IMPs, which most resembled money play. (It also featured very long matches between teams of top pros, in a Swiss format, whereas Barry could win points playing patzers like me.) (That said, Barry was an outstanding player, as the bridge community was willing to acknowledge once he was dead.)
These days there are all sorts of ranks above and beyond LM, requiring thousands of points to attain. There is also a separate ranking for world competition with more modest point totals but more exalted cachet.
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