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Nack Ballard's unusual checker-play position

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Sunday, 28 February 2010, at 1:05 a.m.

In the Ballard/Weaver book on backgammon openings, there is an interesting position devised by Nack where there are five different plausible checker plays. According to the book, one of these plays is best at DMP, another is best at GG, a third is best at GS, and the fourth and fifth are tied for best for money. The position is given below; if you haven't seen it before you may enjoy figuring out what the five plays are and which is best at which score.

The position got me thinking about other tasks of this sort. For example, is there a position and a match score where the correct checker play ATS is not correct at any of the four "standard" scores (money, DMP, GS, GG)? An obvious example that comes to mind is a late endgame position at backgammon-go, where aggressively going for the backgammon is correct. Are there any other examples?

Another interesting challenge would be to come up with a checker play that is correct at 3-away/3-away but not for money, and vice versa. Playing around a bit, I think the fourth-roll position 21U-44B-61P-55? might be an example, but I'd have to roll it out to be sure. Can anyone come up with a better example?

gnubg	130
tchow	153
Position ID: NmY3ACKaPeAAOA Match ID: cIktAAAAAAAA

Messages In This Thread

• Nack Ballard's unusual checker-play position
  Timothy Chow -- Sunday, 28 February 2010, at 1:05 a.m.
  • Nack Ballard's unusual checker-play position
    Martin -- Sunday, 28 February 2010, at 9:27 p.m.
  • Nack Ballard's unusual checker-play position
    Bob Koca -- Monday, 1 March 2010, at 6:01 p.m.
  • Nack Ballard's unusual checker-play position — 2 years later
    Taper_Mike -- Friday, 6 January 2012, at 10:04 a.m.