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Need for New hardware for backgammon

Posted By: svilo
Date: Tuesday, 2 February 2010, at 4:47 p.m.

In continuation to Posted By: Rich Munitz <rmunitz@verizon.net> Date: Tuesday, 2 February 2010, at 3:36 p.m.

In Response To: Take up a last century project (svilo)

Develop software that will take a video feed of a match and reliably convert it into a match transcript and you'll have a line of people to buy it and embrace it. Even if people need to use special high contrast dice, I imagine that would not be a deal breaker. If backgammon is to ever get onto television, the dice visibility problem has to be solved anyway, so people will have to adapt.

Clocks may have had some resistance and continues to, but they solve a real problem that is important to solve and unacceptable to many not to solve. There are enough players and directors screaming for clock usage.

This concept, however will never gain acceptance quite simply because there is no real problem with doing nothing (keeping things as they are), and there is nobody screaming for such a solution - only someone trying to convince people that it is something they need. Jakob Garal has developed a special board and keypads that generates/captures the dice and the checker plays and spits out a real-time match record. Yet where has that gone? People find it interesting but just don't like the playing experience and so it has gone nowhere. And believe me - nobody has tried to sell their concept harder than Jakob.

I would like to remind cars were seen with no future for about 20 years. Radio was seen with no future quite long.

What I proposed in 1999 in a rough but ready to use product was a svilo Score Cube, Clock and Dice (4 in 1)tool.

This is from the user manual

quote

What is SSCCD As backgammon is becoming an internationally recognized sport, more and more backgammon tournament rules provide for playing with a clock. Chess clocks are used to help players and tournament directors (TD) comply with the provisions.

Rolling the dice from dice cups and using the clock makes the whole procedure - evaluation of cube action, shaking the dice in the cup, rolling, thinking, moving, pressing the clock still longer as more devices are used - the backgammon set including a doubling cube, dice cups and dice set of four, the clock.

Another consideration is the randomness of the roll produced. With so many "movements" a player has to make, it is difficult both for the player to produce the required uniform mechanical shaking and rolling of dice and for his opponent to control whether this has been performed. It is also very difficult for TD to verify an offense

Conflicts may arise as to the value, ownership of the cube or match score.

Sometimes, conflicts arise in respect of the last roll. Especially where two sets of dice are used.

The SSCCD is designed to help overcome most of these problems.

The digital device is programmed to produce random rolls.

The SSCCD keeps in memory at all times the following parameters: Match score; Value and ownership of the cube; Turn to roll and turn to play; Dice rolled; When the dice are picked by the opponent, the previous roll is kept in memory and can be reproduced on request before rolling oneself;

There is a Fischer function (offered once by the great American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer). If enabled, when a player's clock reaches 00 hours 55 minutes and his turn comes, the clock will not run 10 seconds for his cube decision and another 10 seconds for his checker play. This "free time" is not accumulated. This means that the player with less than 5 minutes left will never increase his remaining time, but his time left will decrease each time he uses more than 10 seconds for a cube decision or for a checker play.

I discussed the idea and showd a prototype to Chris Ternel in Istanbul January 1999, who thought a play-recording board was an excellent idea. If I continued with the SSCCD this was the next step. I would not do it as the German? engineer Jacob. I had better play experience sulutions, but no real demand, and I had some personal reasons, so I quit then.

I am not selling my idea with 11 years delay, I just rouse your atention to the vision that specialized backgammon harware HAS FUTURE. I guess Jeremy Bagai or friends in his company can confirm.