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Backgammon mentioned on "Numberphile"
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Backgammon mentioned on "Numberphile" (Timothy Chow)
Date: Saturday, 30 December 2023, at 4:54 p.m.
I wrote:
"Numberphile" is a YouTube channel that popularizes mathematics. In the latest video, The Beautiful Math of Snakes and Ladders, backgammon is mentioned favorably near the end, along with a suggestion that it grew out of an even older game.
The interviewee in that video was mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, who has a new book out, Around the World in Eighty Games. Chapter 1 begins as follows.
What makes a great game? First, it shouldn't finish before it's even started. Even if you're not as good as your opponent, there should still be a chance that you can win. Second, it mustn't finish before it ends. The best games are those in which, right up to the last move, there remains a chance that anyone could win. This means that the best games invariably include an element of chance. And yet, third, chance alone is not enough. There should be some role for strategy and agency, or else the player is converted into little more than a machine implementing the rules of the game. Fourth, simplicity should give rise to complexity. Simple rules allow you to get playing quickly, but the variety provided by multiplying possible outcomes makes a game worth returning to again and again. Fifth, a good story is paramount. No need for castles and goblins, but still, like a good piece of mathematics, a rewarding game traces a compelling narrative arc.
My first game on our journey around the world I believe ticks all these boxes. It is one of the most perfect games and also, it turns out, one of humanity's most ancient.
Game number 1 is, of course, backgammon.
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