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BGonline.org Forums
Who were the best players of the pre-bot age?
Posted By: Rick Janowski In Response To: Who were the best players of the pre-bot age? (Daniel Murphy)
Date: Friday, 14 September 2012, at 10:55 p.m.
I quote from the excellent Walter Trice article on Gammon Village from 20 September 2003 where he annotated the 1987 Monte Carlo Final between Robertie, the eventual winner, and Grandell his opponent.
"Grandell was the first player to really capitalize on the teachings of the 'bots. His Jellyfish-assisted studies took him from relative obscurity to general recognition as the toughest player around in the mid-nineties.Bill Robertie has modified his game considerably since this match was played, and he has written an outstanding book, Modern Backgammon, focusing on the new strategic concepts that he has gleaned from the neural networks. But that is now, and this was then..."
In that match, the prs were 8.3 and 10.3 for Robertie and Grandell respectively, which seem to be typical for general championship level players of the 80s apart from perhaps the very top echelon. Robertie got a similar pr of 8.4 when he won Monte Carlo for the first time in 1983.
I played Grandell a couple of times in the early 90s. My impression was that he was a little inferior to Marmorstein and Lumper but probably at a similar level to Meyburg as they all played then, so my best guess would be pr 7.5.
I have matches #1 and #3 for which the prs were 2.75 and 4.00. The pr level of 2.75 for a Monte Carlo Final win in 1997, after Jellyfish was introduced but before the release of Snowie (in 98) with its much more useful focussed player improvement/analysis tools, is astonishing.
If you have match #2 please send it to me.
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