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BGonline.org Forums
Freakonomics: Why Isn’t Backgammon More Popular?
Posted By: poseidon In Response To: Freakonomics: Why Isn’t Backgammon More Popular? (Klaus Evers)
Date: Wednesday, 15 December 2010, at 10:09 a.m.
My feel regarding the decline in backgammon popularity is it arises from the non-fact that Backgammon is "solved". If you ask a top-class player like Mochy he will tell you that backgammon is "far from solved". If you ask a novice or intermediate player he will probably tell you that nowadays backgammon is "solved" (neural nets). It doesn't really matter that backgammon is not solved, it matter most that most players (of average and below average strength) believe that it is solved. Every day hundreds of beginner (masters wannabe) face the cruel truth (using bots) that they are not strong.
One of the things that used to attract people to backgammon is that everybody believed that they are the best or one of the best players in their club, country or the world. I remember how confident Barclay Cook was on his comments and analysis of positions in his book. He did supported his assertions with valid points (however he probably didn’t weight the factors right as gnubg would “say” today) and was denominated as the leading backgammon authority of that time. This was like magic.
1) Why is poker so popular (maybe not at its peak but still impressively popular)?
2) Is it a coincidence that backgammon popularity is steadily dropping during the bot-era?
Despite all that said above I DO believe that backgammon can evolve again. I like Bob Watchel’s comment in his interview that backgammon needs “Nothing but marketing.” Backgammon is a beautiful (apart from cruel) game that under certain conditions could evolve again!
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