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BGonline.org Forums
Is bitching rude?
Posted By: John O'Hagan In Response To: Is bitching rude? (adambulldog)
Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2009, at 3:20 a.m.
Don't know if there should be a rule against it but I also think your opponent's behavior was awful. I think the right way to behave when things go against you in backgammon is to just keep a poker face and say nothing. Jake Jacobs once told me (paraphrasing) that if you let your emotions show in situations like this then these same emotions will start affecting your thinking as well. Don't know if it's true or not but it sounded logical to me (easier said than done though). Most of the top players behave this way, so there's probably something to it. If Jake's right, your opponent's behavior probably caused him to play worse than normal.
For an example of how to behave when the dice gods just won't let you win, let me tell you about a match I once saw the legendary Paul Magriel lose to Denmark's Jan Blaxton (sp?) in Monte Carlo. I think it was in '02. I had just finished playing my 2nd round match and looked around the room to see if there were any matches going on that I wanted to watch. I always felt like I learned something watching x22 play, so I wandered over. Magriel was up 15-5 to 17, cube in the middle. He had just rolled a strong D3 and pointed on Jan's blot on X's 5-point with the 1st 2 3s to give him the best 4-point board and was considering what to do with his other two 3s. I don't remember X's exact position except that his back men were split on the 24 and 22. Blaxton had one man on the roof, a blot on the 23 and all his other men were on the mid, 8, and 6 points. Anyway, Magriel decided to put the other checker on the bar by playing 5/2x(2). Certainly a reasonable play since a gammon with the cube unturned wins the match. Jan however responded with D5 to make the anchor and PoH on his 3-point. Magriel danced and Jan rolled another D5 to PoH on the other blot and went on to win an undoubled g to make it 15-7.
This was the start of an almost unbelieveable comeback victory for the Dane. Each of the next 4 games went early double/take with Jan winning each game to tie the score at 15-15. In one of the games, Magriel had a perfectly timed deucepoint game but missed 3 highly probable game-winning shots and lost. Another game, Jan won the race with one man closed out and no checkers borne off. In this game, the bearoff came down to X had to roll a missing 3, Jan needed certain doubles, X had to roll non-sets, and then Jan needed another set to win it. In another game, Jan was playing a poorly timed 1-3 back game with his other 11 men crashed down to his 1-2-3-4 points. Magriel had 2 on the 7 and 2 on his 6, and rolled (you guessed it!)54 leaving 2 blots and a quadruple shot. Jan hit both but X got a little luck of his own and became a favorite until Jan escaped with a 65 then D6 to win the race handily.
At 15-15, Jan doubled early with a slight edge and X took. Things went Jan's way and X ended up playing a 3-point holding game well down in the race. Jan had borne off a few checkers and was now down to 2 men on the 4-point vs. X's one checker on the 22. Jan rolled and one die landed with an ace showing while the other one was spinning. The spinning die wasn't anywhere near the die with the ace up so this meant Magriel was now a 2/1 favorite to get a shot. Surely the dice gods going to let X get a shot, hit it, and win the match, to even things out, right? Not hardly. The other die finally stopped spinning with another ace uppermost. D1 - a gin number!
Throughout all these games, X never said a word, winced, or complained at all. Even after the match was over, he didn't seem too steamed about it. 99% of us would be extremely steamed after such a prolonged sequence of bad luck against us but he handled it better than virtually any of us would have. Imagine how your opponent would have reacted to this, Adam!
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