| |
BGonline.org Forums
Many will find this ludicrous...
Posted By: W Womack In Response To: Many will find this ludicrous... (Michael Petch)
Date: Monday, 10 September 2012, at 1:27 a.m.
I am not sure I totally agree with the statement "what people didn't know didn't hurt them." I suppose it depends on your expectations and what you were hoping to get out of playing on SHG. Stronger players, especially world class players, probably didn't notice for several reasons. 1. They did not play all that much on SHG compared to playing other places. 2. The weren't using SHG as a place to work on their game. 3. They have seen enough false claims about computer generated dice enough that their bias is to not suspect the dice.
On the other hand take a player like me that had dabble in online play in the past but was in the process of getting semi-serious about the game after starting to play on SHG regularly. I begin to study the game some, but almost all of my play was still on SHG. After we discovered the dice issue and SHG created the yellow dice rooms I found that my error rate-- at that time based on GNU -- was higher and a lot of my larger errors were coming from misplaying doubles. With the erroneous dice I got much less practice playing doubles and did not see the errors as often. I also saw some changes in game planning and play that were significant, most notably I think was the fact that with 40% fewer doubles a 4 prime becomes a lot more powerful. The game was different enough that I had to begin relearning some things, admittedly they were sublte changes, but added up they were significant.
Fortunately I had not been playing on SHG all that long before the dice issue came to light and was dealt with, but had it never been found I would have probably been in for some additional surprises when I started playing in the Madison Club. While I am still an advanced/intermediate level player I am sure that were I playing on SHG with the red dice and thinking I was playing real backgammon my game would be weaker and my improvement slower. So in that sense yes what I did not know could have hurt me.
I think it was Bob Koca that mention during some of the discussions around the SHG dice that a game with 40% fewer doubles might not be backgammon, but for a lot of people it might be a more enjoyable game. That may be true, and for people who only want to play socially online maybe it is fine for them to have a place to play that game, but I still don't think you should call it backgammon.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.