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Real Backgammon

Posted By: Bill Calton
Date: Monday, 26 April 2010, at 2:44 a.m.

In Response To: Real Backgammon (Timothy Chow)

I come from chess myself. I would say in chess the opening is overrated. I always teach my chess students that while certainly important, the opening is rarely the reason you win or lose. You get the most bang for your improvement buck by discovering your biggest weaknesses and working on those. Tactics is probably the biggest obstacle for the average player, but so is calculating, thought process, technical knowledge of pawn structures and endgames, etc. As a 2300 player myself, I firmly believe you can be a master with almost no opening knowledge. I am trying to learn backgammon now. I have made the assumption that backgammon opening knowledge is similar to chess. Important, for sure, and definitely worth knowing. Yet, this is not the reason I am winning and losing games. Better is to find my whopper cube and checker plays (and there are plenty) and work on those. To start with, I decided to work through Robertie’s 501 Essential Problems several times. I am hoping to gain a solid foundation of knowledge, to build upon later as time goes on. I have completed one pass so far. You can follow my progress on my blog, Billblogsbackgammon.blogspot.com

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