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BGonline.org Forums
Hand-recording matches
Posted By: Matt Ryder In Response To: Hand-recording matches (Timothy Chow)
Date: Tuesday, 29 December 2009, at 6:16 a.m.
If I were to attempt this, I'd use nactation as much as possible to gain practical experience with a nascent transcription standard. When the going gets hairy, I'd use a 'destination' shorthand similar to that which you describe. I'd also want to develop a set of marks to highlight hits, point making plays and doublets with more than two destinations points. Plus I'd want a mechanism for indicating illegal plays so that these don't get mixed up with occasional mis-transcriptions.
But I'd advise against hand-recording your own matches, for the following reasons:
a.) Strictly speaking, it's in contravention of US tournament rules, specifically this clause:
1.5 AIDS. Once a match is in progress, players shall not use written, mechanical, or electronic aids except to keep score.
This may seem like an arbitrary prohibition, but consider the potential for cheaters to scribble coded notes containing pip-counts, match equities etc.
b.) I think we're on the brink of a digital revolution where hand transcriptions will rapidly become a quaint relic of a bygone era. Even the cheapest digital camera these days comes with advanced technology that's able to locate a person's smile. Cellphones are increasingly offering image recognition and 'augmented reality' applications. Deciphering a backgammon board, where the checkers are of a uniform size on a fixed rectangular playing surface should be relatively trivial. As a side-project, I've been investigating backgammon 'machine vision' and I'm convinced it's not a big deal. I'm busy writing a program to store and dynamically search reference positions, and the facility to convert positions from images and video is high up on my todo list.
c.) Hand-recording your own matches is enormously distracting. I've attempted it in the past and my game has suffered. It's a nice idea in theory, but over the board I find this a huge impediment to my focus, especially if I need to do hard mental work like adjusted pip counts, match equity evaluations etc. With the added time pressure of the clock, transcription must be exceptionally stressful. Also, you're periodically taking your eyes off the board to scribble notes, so there are opportunities for your opponent to cheat by 'adjusting the checkers' etc. No doubt self-transcription is possible if you're a prodigy like Stick, but I cannot recommend it for a newcomer to the tournament scene. Rather devote your energy to developing the sang-froid and fabled BMT (big match temperament) needed to make it through the finals.
If I were you, I'd ask a bystander to do it, or hire somebody to transcribe all your matches on your behalf.
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