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BGonline.org Forums
Questions on two BG strategy books
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Questions on two BG strategy books (Jack Mack)
Date: Friday, 31 March 2017, at 3:22 p.m.
I'm only part way through Olsen's book but here's what I would say so far. Olsen makes an effort to list all the most important strategic concepts in backgammon: race, blitz-value, contact-value, timing, etc. Then he goes through a long list of types of positions, and for each type, he says which concepts should be given a lot of weight and which concepts should not be given a lot of weight. I have not seen any other author try to do this sort of thing systematically. His list of concepts and types of positions is longer than any other similar list that I have seen published.
There's another concept in his book called the "value equation" which I think Olsen regards as very important, but I have only glimpsed it while thumbing through the book and I haven't gotten to that section yet. It looks like an attempt to assess the value of a position by summing up its race value, its blitz value, its priming value, and its contact value.
As for Hickey and Storer's book—although I really like this book and have spent a lot of time studying it (before and after its publication), I have to say that I find the title slightly misleading. The book is really a collection of miscellaneous problems, and unlike (say) New Ideas in Backgammon or 501 Essential Backgammon Problems, the problems are not grouped by theme. Various strategic concepts are mentioned throughout the course of the book in the discussion of the problems, but unlike Olsen, the authors offer no systematic discussion of "game plan" and "strategy."
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