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BGonline.org Forums
Backgammon and the Masters
Posted By: Chuck Bower In Response To: How do we promote the game? (Stick)
Date: Monday, 13 April 2015, at 1:20 a.m.
We seem to be a species that thrives on conflict. Just watch "reality TV" to get confirmation of that. Yet here I have to agree with both Bill and Stick. I congratulate both of you for stepping up and defending our game.
I (like many of you) just finished watching the Masters golf tournament. A 21 year old arriving (yes, I spelled that the way I intended) star, Jordan Spieth, dominated the week. But even more noteworthy (IMO), two of his closest competitors, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy, paid compliments to him in TV interviews that followed the competition. More on that shortly.
Although I've hardly ever picked up a tennis racket, I've always been of the opinion that backgammon and tennis share way more in common than backgammon and golf. Backgammon and tennis are one-on-one (or two-on-two in the case of doubles) contests. The best(?) strategy is to detect and then exploit your opponent's weaknesses. The pressure can't be relieved by anyone but the individuals themselves. (OK, maybe the dice can do that in BG. No comparisons are ever perfect.)
But what backgammon and golf share is the officiating. Although in amateur tennis the players regulate themselves, in professional events there are chair and line judges to make rulings. That isn't the case in either top level BG or golf. For a PGA tour event in the US (and I'm sure in parallel events around the world) there are ~120 players participating in the first two days and typically ~70 over the weekend. That is accompanied by a dozen or (max) about two dozen officials, many of whom aren't even on the course. Golf is called a game of 'honor' where individuals, out of sight of anyone including opponents, are supposed to -- in fact required to -- call irregularities (rules infractions) against themselves. Fortunately to most of us on the backgammon circuit, we share similar responsibility with equivalent resolve.
If you saw the interviews with McIlroy and Mickelson, I wonder if you detected the sincerity in their compliments of Spieth as I did. That's a pretty important skill, IMO -- detecting sincerity.
We need to take seriously our responsibility to police our game. But with that requirement comes the responsibility to be introspective in making sure we don't go overboard in creating scapegoats. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (Google that! :)
But when repeated infractions are reported -- and that's much more likely to occur and be detected publicly than privately -- then solid conclusions are more likely to be reached. This is where "sincerity detection" enters. Given that it's a subjective quality, I suspect most of us overvalue our own ability in this area. But that doesn't mean we should abandon it.
There are risks in both approaches. If public, people can unfairly be branded and made scapegoats. Mob mentality can dominate over fairness. But when kept behind closed doors, evidence is hidden from both the public and even the private judges who are privy to some of the perceived facts. I recall academic principles which were repeatedly violated because professors chose to hide evidence of cheating. Their logic was "a person shouldn't be ostracized due to an isolated incident." So the 'isolated incidents' were repeated by the same individuals!
As with many human challenges, unfortunately there isn't a clear-cut "one size fits all" solution here. I hope we all keep this in mind as we move forward.
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