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BGonline.org Forums
Odd or Even
Posted By: Colin Owen In Response To: My proposal for an event combining PR and winning by score (neilkaz)
Date: Thursday, 7 March 2013, at 1:23 p.m.
As a minor aside to Neil's post (though still worth changing the subject line) it is refreshing to find a player suggest a match to an even score. Neil feels that, for this purpose, 5 pts may be too long, but 3 is a bit short.
I have always felt that the convention of playing matches to an odd score serves no useful purpose, and limits the flexibility in certain situations. You can even find a mention in 'The Backgammon Book' by Jacoby and Crawford of 12 point matches, but this soon died out. At a weekly gathering in which I play, where we average 6 or 7 players, when it's 5 players we usually play a round robin to 3 pts, as 5 pts could well overrun. But a few times more recently the players agreed to my suggestion of 4 pts, and this worked fine.
I think that the custom may have evolved from our slightly unusual way of describing a match length. In all other pursuits I believe, snooker for example, a contest to 6 frames would be described as an 11 frame match; first to two sets in tennis is (best of) three sets and so on. Obviously, the number of units played must be an odd number, to always produce a winner. But the winning post might be odd or even.
Over the years I have mentioned to a number of players the curiosity of only playing to an odd score. Independently, three of them thought about it for a few seconds, then - in all seriousness - said that otherwise the match could result in a draw. I kid you not!
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