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What is Happening to Backgammon?

Posted By: Steve Mellen
Date: Tuesday, 30 November 2010, at 7:44 p.m.

In Response To: What is Happening to Backgammon? (Bob Koca)

I would suspect that, too, and I'm not sure Daniel was saying anything different.

I think ratings are encouraging rather than discouraging to the typical struggling chess player. If your rating is 1400, you know you'll probably never win a tournament or become a grandmaster, but at least if you work on improving your game you can become a 1500-rated player, and then set a new goal from there. In a world with no ratings, your only option would be to keep your own statistics and say, "Last year I won 41.1% of my matches but this year I won 46.3%, so I must be improving!" I don't think that would be as satisfying.

I suspect people are imagining the sort of backgammon tournament player who thinks he's much better than he really is, and speculating that this player will stop playing once he realizes he's a fish. The thing is, if he hasn't already realized it from the fact that he loses the majority of his matches, he'll probably succeed in rationalizing away the rating as well.

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