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BGonline.org Forums
Honest / Bizarre Misplays
Posted By: Albert Steg
Date: Monday, 18 February 2019, at 1:41 a.m.
This weekend at the Boston Open, I rented a video recording station for the first time and have just stated replaying the matches while transcribing into XG. I'm a little appalled to find that I've already found two illegal checker plays I made in the first 5 matches I've worked on.
The first is actually pretty hilarious. My opponent Allen Tish and I had interrupted our pre-tourney match for dinner and enjoyed drinks with Roberto and Irina at her valentines-birthday dinner in the South End of Boston. After one solid, somewhat complex game, we started the second, and as we were setting up, I raised a question about a hitting choice he had passed up, and yada yada he rolls an opening 32 and plays it, and we're still talking about last game and I'm pointing to positions in my home board where i night have had blots in that game - - - and then I play a 32 AS THOUGH I HAD ROLLED IT as a reply . . . but if that weren't enough of a goof, I MIS-PLAY it, hitting with a 2 on my 4-point and bringing down a checker 13/11 . . . . and there's a quiet pause and I recall really feeling sort of vaguely disquieted and say, "uhhh, is this illegal?" but I can't tell why and he corrects my second checker so I play 13/10, "legally." This WHOLE TIME the dice lie on the table as rolled initially, one on each side, and neither of us figured that out.
The second instance, was a 32 play in a later match a couple days later involving checkers bunched up around my bar-point and although I'm scrupulous "offsetting" checkers when looking at a play so they can be taken back, somehow in the process I wound up taking back a 3 and playing a 2.
I also had the widely-viewed incident in Texas against Jonah Seewald where I had to double-blot and bore off two checkers instead of just one (the other properly going to my ace-point). This situation has in common with the one with Allen that it involved me and my opponent talking / 'socializing' a bit over the situation, which is a clear distraction.
I'm pretty sure none of my opponents have worried that I made these errors intentionally, but I would have to own that I make these errors more than most experienced players -- and can share several huge mis-reading blunders that cost me dearly where maybe I thought I needed a 5 to escape a prime but it was a 4 -- but wow, what an eye-opener to find these glitches!
I'm wondering whether others have similar stories? How frequently do illegal plays happen? What's the strangest honestly-illegal (as in not intentional) misplay you've seen or made?
I understand that some people will take this as an opportunity to tout a "touch-move" rule in backgammon. But I'm more interested in just how common misplays are, especially as revealed in recorded matches where such misplays are discovered only after the fact. Please start a different thread if you want to talk about rules changes. (A touch-move rule would not have affected 2 of the 3 situations I've described anyhow).
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