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BGonline.org Forums
Backgammon psychology
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Backgammon psychology (Nir Grinberg)
Date: Sunday, 16 October 2011, at 12:16 a.m.
I think you should distinguish between what I'd call the "narrow definition" of psychology, which focuses on adjusting your checker and cube play according to your knowledge of your opponent's (and your own!) strengths and weaknesses, and the "broader definition" of psychology, which includes methods of manipulating your opponent to play poorly. If you haven't noticed that the former is discussed here on BGO all the time then you simply haven't been paying attention; for example, here and here are two recent examples. There is a whole book on the subject by Trice and Jacobs.
Psychological warfare according to the "broader definition" (also called "gamesmanship") is more controversial. It was discussed for example in this thread. Ray Fogerlund, who no longer posts here, used to rant a lot about the subject; here, here, and here are some examples.
The consensus seems to be that some amount of gamesmanship is fine. Most everybody thinks it's O.K. to exude confident body language when you offer a double even if you think it's technically dubious, so as to induce your opponent to pass. In a consulting chouette, it's O.K. to use whatever general people skills you possess to win friends and influence people. It's obviously not O.K. to cheat or be violent, as reported here for instance. This is an interesting area for discussion but there isn't much quantitative that can be said.
If you have a chess background then you may know Nikolai Krogius's book Psychology in Chess. This covers a variety of interesting topics that I have not seen discussed much in the backgammon context. For instance, Krogius talks a lot about the psychology of making mistakes. Why do we make mistakes? It's not just a matter of insufficient technical knowledge. Tigran Petrosian, former world champion, did not blunder away a queen against David Bronstein because he was unaware that it was a valuable piece. A sizable percentage of my own backgammon whoppers are ones where I should have known better. So how did I manage to play the whoppers anyway? How do we identify our own psychological blindspots and work to eliminate them? I think there is room for more articles in this area. Trice has a relevant chapter in Backgammon Boot Camp but it's very brief.
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